Update: Planning My Partner's Birthday

Matt is into fun experiences more than he's into stuff, so I think a Day O' Fun is the perfect thing for his birthday.

I tried to think through how he would want to spend the day. Here's what I came up with:

1. Waking up and going trail running
2. Eating breakfast at his favorite breakfast spot: Baby Barnaby's (and playing Boggle while we wait in the long line)
3. Taking Hoss for a bike ride
4. Bowling (this is where his friends show up and surprise him)
5. Watching his soccer game (ooh! We should surprise him with "Go Matt" signs) and eating appetizers on a picnic blanket
6. Eating dinner at a comfy, cozy place: Star Pizza
7. Playing board games at his favorite ice-cream shop: Amy's

Phew. I'm tired just typing that list. But Matt is a go-er and a do-er. I think he'll really like an action-packed day.

I was tempted to make paper invitations to convey to guests the importance of the event, but I decided against it for budgetary and environmental reasons.

Instead, I sent them an e-mail message, but I attached an invitation (the one pictured above--although it's actually not fuzzy in real life). I designed it in Microsoft Word using text boxes and auto shapes. Because I wasn't printing it, I just ran everything right to the edge (although, if you were going to print it and wanted a similar look, you could always just trim off the excess white stuff).

1. The purple, blue, and pink sections are just rectangles that I filled with color, eliminated a border, and sent "to the back" so I could put stuff on top of them.
2. The black sections are actually three different lines, each at a width of 50pt.
3. All the lettering is in text boxes, although I used the "text direction" feature to flip Matt's name. Also, the street addresses are in separate text boxes.
   
4. The sets of four dots are actually just two colons right next to each other.
   

I then turned it into a pdf using a free converter, so it wouldn't get damaged in the transition from my e-mail inbox to theirs.

I set up an online RSVPing system using Survey Monkey. You can take a look at it here if you want.

As always, if you have any questions about how something was done, just leave a comment.

And don't worry; I asked Matt not to look at the blog for a while. I said I'm "planning Christmas presents."

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