Master Jon

On Saturday - May 19, 2012 - Jon graduated with his MASTER'S degree in English from California State University Sacramento.

That morning we had an open house for him to celebrate!

El Shrine de Jon:

I put together a poster board of Jon's work this year (which Jon was VERY helpful with. I am known for my classic procrastination skills and finished this poster up the morning of the open house. Jon helped me score the foam board and even went to Target to pick up the pictures for me. What a guy!) Since it is hard to see, I will post the pictures below so you can look at them in better detail.

Among the items on the table are Bazzanella Literary Award anthologies (Jon won first place in the graduate division for poetry this year), the Calaveras Station Literary Journal (which Jon was one of the executive editors for this year. He designed and physically helped put together every journal. This was the first year they have had color printed in the journal. He did an AMAZING job!) There are also copies of the books he helped build at the independent publishing press, Copilot, for which he was an intern this past year.

Here is Jon's graduation cap from commencement yesterday (the HC is from his thesis) and there on the right is his diploma from graduating with his Bachelor's in English - May 2010:

Because Jon's emphasis was in Creative Writing, his thesis was a creative project - which had to be a publishable work of either novella length fiction or a compilation of creative pieces (such as a collection of poetry). He went with a novella (short version of a novel) and it turned out AMAZING! The copies that he has printed and bound so far have all been done by hand and each one is a little different. I personally dig this purple copy which was made for Stephanie Sauer - founder of Copilot Publishing Press.

A shot from the inside the novella:

One of my favorite features throughout the book is the footnotes, which Jon designed to be INSIDE the pages (which are printed on a fold) so you can read the book straight through without interruption, or you can literally cut open the edge of each page to read the extra material inside. He is so creative :)

Here is the copy of the Novella that he made for his sister, Beth:

Jon has also been working more lately on personal binding projects. He made my newest journal (which you can see in a previous post) and this one below is for a co-worker of mine:

All finished and complete with bookmark! Stay tuned for us opening an ETSY store...

At the open house we had TONS of amazing food! Since it was a brunch time we did an assortment of breakfast and lunch-ish finger foods.

Jon's brother Mike made his famous cinnamon rolls :)

I made these breakfast egg, cheese and bacon muffins with my new mini cupcake maker! Recipe was from Better Homes and Gardens.

Other deliciousness included mini nutella cheesecakes, chocolate-strawberry swirl cake, artichoke spinach dip, gluten free brownies, fruit salad with golden raspberries (thanks Breanna!) a veggie platter and pink lemonade (Jon's favorite) supplied by Jon's parents :)

I will do a separate post with all the recipes in case anyone wants them.

Jon's dad also did this awesome splatter and palette knife style painting for Jon's graduation! It's still under construction, but VERY neat and outside his normal style for sure!

And what is a creative writing master without a fantastic set of fancy pens?? Thanks mom and dad!

 Because I didn't want to spend the whole duration of the open house behind the camera, I didn't get a lot of pictures of the people who were there or the other extremely thoughtful gifts and cards people got for Jon. So here is my shout out to all the awesome friends and family who came!

Jon's mom and dad (Steve and Chris)

Jon's brother and sister-in-law (Mike and Amanda) with their daughter (AnnMarie)

My parents (John and Nancy) with my sister (Michelle)

Ben and Breanna Baker

Kacy Wyatt

Jake and Brenda Joyner

Tim and Jamie Sartain (along with their chilluns and dog)

Ali Goff (and her hubby Tim, in spirit - he had a gig with his band)

Crystal Poole and her son Jace as well as her step-mom Catherine

***

After an afternoon nap we headed to the graduation!

My parents were there:

me and Michelle:

And Jon's parents too!

I didn't want to change camera lenses, so the pictures aren't very close from the actual commencement - but this is great because you can feel like you were actually there!

For your convenience I  have circled or drawn arrows to Jon so that you can find him. Otherwise it's like a massive grad version of Where's Waldo!!

Here he is when they first came in. Front row! And after a few minutes he actually stood on his chair and turned to find us in the crowd. He had his phone with him so I sent him a text to let him know what section we were in. Ah, technology :)

Here is Jon being "hooded" by one of the faculty. He is officially a master with wizard's robes!

And there he is, walking across the front as they read his name :)

And here we are after the ceremony with Jon all decked out! The gold/green hood falls down his back and the yellow sash and cords in the front are for honor societies he belongs to for academics and such.

CONGRATULATIONS MASTER JON!

Let life after school begin :)