Graduation Money Leis

Gail being her beautiful self

My sweet friends asked me to help put out food for their sons' graduations from High School. Being that they are both such dear friends and fellow homeschoolers, I was happy to help out. Of course, I had some suggestions. Hey, if it is worth doing it worth "overdoing"! Our mutual friend, Gail, was happy to pair up with me again (she did a wedding reception for a friend with me) and, as always, she did a phenomenal job on the food and on some fun decorating ideas.

Gail cut carrots with a Pampered Chef crinkle cutter
to resemble fries at our 50's diner themed table. 

Some of the graduates' family members and I put together these cute chocolate graduation caps. The instructions are all over the web. I ended up using "S'mores" chocolate squares from the Dollar Store (I also saw them at CVS). I also used Sour Straws cut up to resemble the tassle. It was sticky, but worked great. My only suggestion is to not put these candies on shish-k-bob skewers. They ended up getting hot and falling off. Put them on a platter only. Also, be sure and use a generous glob of royal icing between the mini peanut butter cup and the square. I ended up putting 1/4 a cup of cocoa in the royal icing mix to color and flavor the icing. That was the right call.

I really dug some cool Money Leis I saw on Pintrest. I think they would be really neat for a wedding or a birthday. I put my twist on them and they came out really well. It ended up being $25 in $1 bills. It looks like a lot more. You can also customize with your graduates favorite candy. Here are the steps to making it.

1. Cut a length of ribbon to make the necklace to tie everything on. It is blue in these pictures.

2. Fold the dollar bills in a fan and tie in the middle. I used $25 in $1 bills to make a large lei. You can put two $1 bills together in each fan bundle if you want to give more.

3. I found some tulle on a roll at the dollar store and cut them in squares to hold the candy. Put the candy in the middle of the square and tie them at the top with some curling ribbon.  

4. Alternate candy and dollar bills tied to the blue ribbon necklace.

5. Open out the dollar bills. This fills out the lei.

Finished Product!

A happy graduate

Another happy graduate

Another cute thing we did was a photo booth. I purchased a cardboard display board from Wal-Mart. It came in black, which was perfect. I printed out copies of the various car parts and accessories from online. My husband works for an engineering firm and they have a huge color plotter. They were generous enough to let us print out this cool background. Then we put a basket of dress up clothes. We had a photographer on hand. It was lots of fun and we put it right by the tables so it was part of our entertainment. Adults and kids alike got into it.

I got lots of ideas for my son's graduation in two years. It's going to be so much fun!