A friend who had never been to Europe before left for there a few weeks ago. Although she was excited, she was also nervous about the trip, because she was going by herself. She almost backed out at the last minute, so I decided to throw her a party to give her some encouragement from her friends. I went online looking for bon voyage party invitations at the last minute, not even knowing if such a thing existed. It turns out they do! What’s more, they were free.

For her dinosaur friends who don’t have computers, I downloaded the bon voyage invitations, which had vintage travel posters on them, and printed them on my computer. I either faxed or mailed those. For the e-mail crowd, I just printed one copy, filled in the party details and then scanned that copy. I then just pasted teh image into an e-mail, put all the names in the “bcc” line in Outlook and sent them off. All the invitations were taken care of in a day, and the party turned out to be a great success. My friend thanked me profusely and even sent me a photo of her via e-mail from Paris. She was wearing a beret, sipping wine and pointing out the Eiffel Tower. All cliches, I know, but she was having a good time and that’s all that mattered.