I've always made up recipes. I've got a 1 year old raspberry ginger mead in tertiary - it's my most recent. I tried making a vanilla mead (added vanilla beans to secondary) and I would not recommend it. Papazian has some good introductory info on mead, and The Compleat Meadmaker is a pretty good book as well.
Basically just add honey to water and ferment it. anything beyond that is up to your own tastes. 9 lbs of honey is a good starting point for 5 gallons, and will make a fairly quickly maturing drink.