The day has finally arrived!  Your graduate needs celebrated, inspired to go forward, and congratulated by all her friends and family.  What better way to show your support than with a big ole party/open house! Here's how I celebrated my daughter, McKenna's graduation.

They keys to making any party a success is PREPARATION!  You will need to plan a couple of weeks ahead.  These are the areas that have to be planned.

1. invitations
2. menu (pork and chicken slider bar, appetizers, cake)
3. decorations (both inside and outside if doing both)
4. lighting (lots of mason jars with LED lights, hanging lanterns, and tons of string lights)
5. seating (dining room, back porch, and pergola)
6. drink station
7. gift area
8. photo booth  (an easy DIY project)
9. activities (corn hole is awesome)

Invitations are usually done either by the photographer or you can upload your own to shutterfly or tinyprints.   I designed an insert to be sent with McKenna's graduation invitation inviting everyone to our house the night before!

The menu came together as my great friends, neighbors, and family all pitched in and helped me stock our SLIDER BAR! YUM!

I decided on the menu, I copied cute ideas straight from Pinterest. Next up, decorations!  McKenna was a cheerleader her entire life, so,  I gathered all her old uniforms when she was little, tons of pom poms and other memorabilia and decided to make cheerleading, along with her school colors, our main theme. We gathered lots of meaningful photos, keepsakes, certificates, awards, and everything we could find with a Bulldog on it!  Here are some pictures of how it all came together, starting with the front door.

Door pennant is from Etsy. Chinese Lanterns are from Amazon.

Drink Cart stocked with Sangria for adults, Blueberry Lemonade,  and blue stripped paper straws from etsy!

Mercury Glass LED lights and mason jars were perfect for this outdoor celebration after dark. I ordered all of these from Amazon and will be used for many future celebrations, a great little investment.

Paper lanterns in all our school colors were beautiful hanging in the trees.  These come in all shapes and sizes www.paperlanternstore.com

Photo Trees are from Restoration Hardware.  We use these all seasons at our house!  We added the photos as a way to make them fun for our guests and graduate.

Here some images from our homemade photo booth.  This DIY project took a little work, but was so worth it.  It's only fitting that a photographer would have a photo booth/selfie station at a party! All our guests had fun grabbing different props. The Background is a curtain I borrowed from my photography studio.  I copied the photo booth fonts from a chalkboard book.

Back porch decorations were a combination of led lights, plaid pillows that compliment our school colors. My favorite thing about this seating area are the old H.H.S. Yearbooks we spread on the table for a walk down memory lane!  We had issues from the 70's through some of the 2000's.

We had to have a cake and decided to go with a simple design with a focus on DELICIOUS FLAVORS from our local artist, Teresa Caudill.

The tablescape was a mixture of fresh flowers, glitter, candles, balloons and McKenna's tiny cheerleading uniforms.

I have to say the party was SO MUCH FUN!  As a mom, the planning and decorating was therapy for me. Here's my graduate!