Vehement Solutions for Trivial Problems: Graduation Open House- Part II

Note: To read about our first graduation open house, click HERE.

At first our son was a bit ambivalent about having an open house for his high school graduation, but we didn't give him the option to opt out. Instead, we planned a smaller-scale celebration with family and close friends. I'd been asking him for months ahead of time what kind of food or theme he wanted, and for a long time his only mono-syllabic response was "meat." I brainstormed for some time, and when he later mentioned how much he loved gyros, the idea struck me- could we have a gyro bar? I called over to Bill's Imported Foods in Minneapolis (an institution we have loved for many years) and they were SO easy to work with- we could rent a table-top electric gyro rotisserie from them for $25. BINGO! After that, the details started to come together pretty quickly. We would serve gyros (a 10 lb cone of gyro meat at Bill's was about $40) with the fixings. I would make a big greek salad, chips, grapes, and a big batch of homemade chicken gyro from this recipe, broiling the meat in batches then keeping it warm in a crock pot. We served pop and bottled water, along with beer and wine for the adults (I even made a special stop to buy bottles of retsina).

We scheduled the open house from 12-4 on Sunday May 12th. We took advantage of holding it fairly early in the season since Will went to the U of M full time as a senior and was done with classes by then.

I designed and ordered invitations from Sam's Club photo center.

Grandpa offered to make 3 pans of his famous "crack" brownies for the party, so dessert was set, but to add to the festivities, I decided to order a small photo cake from Denny's 5th Ave bakery in Bloomington for about $40. It came out really nicely.

I'd collected 5"X 7" school photos from kindergarten through his senior year, and hung them up, along with some other memorabilia, the U of M double-sided fleece blanket, travel pillow (see HERE) and graduation photo book I'd made him (see HERE).