Nick's Birthday Invites

This year we're getting the invites out late. Oh well. I had Nick design his own card, and after he had the idea all mocked up, I did it up in Illustrator on the trusty Mac here. He did a really good job I think, and only needed couple pointers. So I made him make the letters all capital (capitol?) but otherwise, he had very clear idea how to make the letters, and the rest was pretty easy. Love it when a 'client' knows what they want - no guessing! Anyway, I thought I'd share the finished product, and if you like it let me know in the comments.
So printing this didn't go exactly as planned. :( I burnt it off to disk, but left the files in AI (native Illustrator) format instead of a PDF. We have a color printer, but I have learned the hard way that printing color in any sort of quantity (these cards are 2 up, front and back, and we needed 26 finished pieces) is fairly expensive because of the ink. So I decided to take my disk to the public library and print it out there - which I have done very successfully in the past. So... I after getting out of bum mode (shower, shave, dressed, etc.) I run some errands and then go to the library media center, which has been relocated to the mall ever since The Flood Of 2008. However, it turns out that I have a hefty fine from a book that I lost, and I can't even log in. So I go up to the counter to take care of that, and after waiting behind some clueless Lutherans for 10 minutes or so, I get up there and pay for my book, then go back to the media center. Whereupon I discover what I have on my disk is a bunch of AI files. Fortunately for me, the library uses Adobe Reader 9.x, so it has no trouble opening up my files. But then I find out they only have one printer. GRRR! It's black n white. They tell me to try FedEx/Kinkos just down the way a bit. So after another errand in between that's where I go. Just the one manager guy there, but he's very nice. I ask him if they can work with AI files I have, he says yep, printing in color on cardstock is close to $2.50... PER SIDE. That is so not doable. Regular paper it's still $1.xx per side. So he suggests printing b/w on colored cardstock. That was $0.40 or so. So I pick out red paper (Nick's fav color) and he was nice enough to give me a proof copy before doing up the rest of them - my gigantic run of 12 more copies. So even though it wasn't exactly what we wanted, it turned out pretty well. And got some nice colored paper which wouldn't have been possible at the library. Ended up costing about 4 bucks. Used their gigantor paper cutter (free) to cut em all up while I was there too. They turned out really well for not being designed for b/w, and the manager guy I think liked them too. We chatted just a little, told him my son came up with idea for the alphabet. He was very personable, but I think he was just lonely all by himself there, not polished customer service kind of thing. Anyway, got them off to school, and they're all delivered, so now we're just waiting for the calls.