::THE TEA PARTY:

 We had the tea party!!  And it went great.  I had to be flexible and change all my well laid out plans.  The party was from 2-4 and a really bad think-about-going-to-the-basement thunderstorm was coming sometime around 4.  In bad weather we usually move parties to the barn, but that didn’t really work with my tea party theme.  So I moved around all my furniture and set up in the house.  It was actually very nice to have all the major set up done ahead of time. 

 

We started out with two different crafts.

 The first one was “Decorate You Tea Cup”.  I had a jar of different color Sharpies for the girls to use.  My only instruction was – write your name on it so you can see it and then decorate it how ever you want.  They came up with some really cute stuff.

 The second craft was newspaper hats.  You take two sheet of a newspaper and unfold it.  Place them on top of the kids head and wrap masking tape around the papers at about eye brow level.  This leads to a hat shape that the kids can then trim and decorate.  Most of the kids left them big, but Lily trimmed hers down to a stylish little hat.  I had feathers out for them use to decorate with.

When these crafts started I had my helpers out on the porch doing face painting.  They had some flowers stamps to use or they could also just free hand things.  My Emma and my neighbor girl, that are the same age, where the big artists of the day.  But my mother in-law and my older neighbor girl (who does most of my babysitting) also did some great work too.

Next we went outside and played games.  I wanted them to burn off a little energy.  We played Duck/Duck/Goose, sugar cube spoon relay, and hot-potato.

Then they came back inside to eat.  An idea that helped me stay within budget came over from my friend Wendy.  She made a circle table runner for her rainbow party and I converted that into my table.  I also used slightly larger circles as chargers.  The napkins had some feather napkin rings added to them.  The pink table cloth is a cheap flat sheet.  The little butterflies down the middle are a little splurge that I am going to use as part of the wrapping on future presents.  Over head was a chandelier that was made from colored straws, twine, and paper.    

The food table was so much fun!  I bought a few spools of tulle and made the skirt.  It’s just a long piece of twine with loops of tulle pulled thru.  Link here for a tutorial on how to make tutu if you want more information.  The table cloth and back ground are two green flat sheets straight out of my linen closet.  I made some of the food and bought some.  I thought long and hard about making all the food, but it really reduced my stress load to just buy some of it.  

 Please see my Tea Party Food post if you want more deets. 

After they ate, I took them back into the craft room to do the last two crafts.  The first craft was making cherry blossom trees.  The girls painted a tree outline and then filled it in with pink punched out flowers.  They girls also got paper dolls to work on.  I bought these from an AMAZING vendor on Etsy called Anne Made Art.  Go see her shop.  She is talented.  And they were so CHEAP.  I had a large enveloped for the girls to take them home in so all the little parts would not get lost.

When all the crafts were done they went outside to play a few more games.  We played a game were they stacked sugar cubes and at the end of one minute whoever had the highest tower won.  Then we played a game were they sat in a circle with their eyes closed and I tucked a tea bag into one persons hand. They had to try and guess which one of them had it.  That game got lots of giggles.    

The party was 2 hours long and they were having fun the whole time.  We only had about ten minutes at the end were I just let them run wild on the playground.  And you could see the black clouds rolling toward us in the distance.     

We sent them home with a little treat bag that I had mocked up earlier in the week.

We ended up adding the flower straws and the tea cup saucers.