A Mad Tea Party!

One of Harriet's favorite books is Tea for Ruby.  For the longest time, I've wanted to do a Tea Party for her birthday and use the ideas in the book.  But about 3 months before turning 5, she and Grace discovered Alice in Wonderland for the first time.  They were hooked right away.  They love the old Disney version as well as the new Johnny Depp Version too.  What a great tea party in that story!  It was perfect for the birthday.

So, we've been planning, and planning, and planning.  I kept picking up things as I was out and about, including real china tea cups (from the thrift store for 99 cents each!), some paper lanterns,

white rabbit stuffed animals for party favors (again, 99 cents at a pre-Easter sale), etc...  The details just kept getting deeper.  We started doing it at the same time as we were planning for Grace's party at the beginning of March.  Grace's was elaborately planned too, and after the hordes (10 feels like hordes to me) of children left, I decided that we actually have MORE fun PLANNING than we do at the party.  The same can be said for Harriet's birthday.  We had such a great time planning and doing details, the party itself was almost an afterthought.  Sure, the kids all had a great time, and of course the party is important, but few if any of them noticed or cared about what we did.  I thought that would matter to me - that no one else cares about all our hard work and thoughtful detail, but I don't.  Harriet cared, and she and I (and Grace) had more fun putting it together than anything.

Here's a photo tour of our "MAD"ness.  Oh, and THANKS to Daddy for coming home from traveling in time for the party and for taking all the pictures.  It's rare that I'm in all the pics.
 
To quote the story: "Everyone here is MAD!"

To start off, I fell into the sewing trap again and made an Alice dress...

Drew up a Cheshire Cat for a "Pin the Smile on the Cheshire Cat game."

Made a rabbit hole out of a pop up tunnel and a paper tree.  Hattie was quite upset that most of her friends wouldn't go through it to get inside when they came to the party.  (oh, and that's Cheshire Cat Grace standing next to Hattie.)

(All the pictures of the kids crawling through it later have my butt in them so we won't be posting those.)

A little craft:

Grace and Hattie had the best time making signs to put up all over the house:

 

A little lunch (Hattie requested tuna sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, sliced cucumbers, and cubed cheese, along with pink "tea" = ginger ale with strawberry daiquiri mix)...

...complete with "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" labels.  We promised the kids that if they ate and drank the right amounts, they'd stay the same size.

 

Open a few presents:

And eat some cake!  Much much credit has to go to my friend, Sacha, who taught me how to do fondant in the first place, and actually spent an entire day at my house helping me create little things to put on this cake!

did you get all those angles?  this thing took a few days...

And, we finished up the party with a little croquet! 

A Very Merry (un) 5th birthday to my Harriet!