Much Ado About Morris: December 2013

Monday, December 2, 2013

A Sweet Tea Party for Caroline's 4th Birthday

I know, I know. You all gave up on me. But I have a lot of great things in store this month, so it's a perfect time to come on back!

Speaking of the month, December starts with the sweetest girl's birthday. I simply cannot believe she just turned 4. It can't be possible! While I ponder that time lapse, enjoy the sights of her par-tea!

It started with a great invitation from my sister-in-law. Seriously, she can design anything. If you haven't considered using Allie Logan Designs, you haven't considered having cute party ware!

When the girls started arriving, they got to play dress up for a little bit. We had an array of hats, scarves, shawls, costume jewelry, and two big picture-mirrors for them to admire their reflections.

Then we had a little photo shoot in our photography area. It was funny to see the different personalities emerge. The glamorous, the timid, the humble, and the down-to-earth.

I did a poor job of photographing this event. I am out of blogging practice, I was being "in the moment" and I have a lack of good, quality photography skills. Therefore, you will have to really visualize how cute this was (or look at Pinterest for your own inspiration.) I had a speaker set up playing Disney music in the background while the girls "had tea" which was really a divisive citrus party punch -- the girls either loved it or drank none of it. Don't worry; what's a tea party without sweet iced tea?

If you look in the background of the picture, you will (almost) see that I had each place set with a cute toile-patterned paper plate atop a chic piece of scrapbook paper for a place mat. Each plate was topped by a china teacup and saucer. There were no matching teacups. Each unique piece was found either at the Alabama Thrift Store, the Goodwill store, or the Salvation Army store.

I filled the china tea pots with punch that we parents helped serve to the girls while they snacked on grapes, cookies, pigs in a blanket, and miniature cinnamon rolls.

I had very specific (unattainable) visions of how I wanted Caroline's cake to look. I also had very attainable limits on my budget! Luckily for both, my local Wal-Mart bakery did a fantabulous job. It tasted delicious, too!

Not pictured are the crazy craft each girl got to do which was put together a small cardboard teapot cache box which they can use for storing their small secret treasures and the goody bags each girl took home with a plastic teacup sippy cup, some tea party stickers, and a great tea party sucker.

Caroline loved her tea party and talked about it all night last night as well as this morning, too.

While yesterday was both her party and her actual birthday, I wanted to do something on a much smaller scale, too. So tonight I let her choose our family dinner -- she chose breakfast for dinner which Rob calls "brinner". Then she got to open her family birthday gift. She was a happy girl!