Tea for three...years old

Miss M turned three!* She had two birthday parties this year. Paul’s birthday is three weeks after hers and it seemed a little much to make our out-of-town family drive to two parties at our house within a month, so we took Meg’s parties to them! Paul gets his own first birthday party this year, but starting next year we’ll have one family party in June for both kids.


It was nice to have parties in each of our hometowns, though, as it allowed family members (cousins and such) who wouldn’t normally drive all the way to a party at our house to come. We threw identical parties in each place.

On the menu were cucumber tea sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly tea sandwiches, barbequed chicken, potato salad, dipped marshmallows, and teacup cupcakes.

I don’t have any white lacy-type tablecloths, so I went to Goodwill to hunt for some. I didn’t find any, but ended up buying flowery sheets to use as tablecloths. I also bought this dress, cut off the top, hemmed the skirt, and used it as a table runner (see below with the hats).

I did consider keeping the dress to wear to the
Blathering, but sacrificed for the good of the party

Hats!

Honestly, the main reason I picked a tea party theme was so we could make these hats. Kelle Hampton made them for Nella’s tea party birthday and I just love this idea. (Though she used hot glue and I stapled them. Also - buy paper plates. I originally had styrofoam, but the kids broke the prototypes in a few seconds flat so I had to go back to the store for new plates.) I took Meg to Michael’s with me and she picked out the butterflies, ribbons, and stickers for the hats. She also picked out the colors for the…

Dipped marshmallows a la MamaBub

You should totally make these. They’re just as easy as Megan says and everyone raved about them. I served them in a vase.

Teacup cupcakes

The teacup cupcakes were the star of the show and my favorite part of the party. I found pictures of these on many sites, but never any instructions. I ended up spraying the cups with cooking spray, pouring in the batter (each one took enough batter for two regular cupcakes), then setting them on a jelly roll pan and sliding the whole thing into the oven. I didn’t turn the oven on until after the cups were in it so they’d heat up slowly and not break from the extreme temperature change.

I bought the teacups at Goodwill, since I don’t have 18 teacups and didn’t want to use the ones I had anyway. This way if they cracked in the oven or got dropped on the concrete shelter floor at the party it wouldn’t really matter. All 18 survived both parties and I’m keeping a few of the prettiest ones and taking the rest back to Goodwill.

Banner

This was super simple. I printed the letters (and circles) on cardstock, then cut them into triangles with a paper cutter. The purple bands on top are pretty paper I found in the clearance bin at Wal-Mart, cut to fit, and attached with a glue stick. It’s strung together with leftover wired Christmas ribbon (it’s glittery with snowflakes all over it, but no one noticed).

Tissue paper poms

These are your basic used-at-every-blogger’s-party tissue paper poms, made following these directions. I found ironing each crease as you make the accordion folds makes it a lot easier. I also ironed the tissue paper before starting so there wouldn’t be pre-existing creases, though I don’t think it matters. To travel to the first party I left them folded in accordions and fluffed them once we arrived. We brought them home and then to the next party and they didn’t fare really well, but were good enough, I suppose (you can probably tell in that banner picture all the way at the top how the poms have seen better days).

It was a lot of work to put on parties out of town on back to back weekends, but I think they turned out really well. Now I have to throw one for Paul in three weeks! Then a birthday party for one of my sisters (which has to be gluten free) and a baby shower for the other sister (but not until October). Yikes.


*You know what's a pain in the you-know-what? Writing posts with pictures when all the pictures live on your husband's computer. For boring reasons, I can't put the pictures on mine, so have to borrow his. You can tell how often that happens since Meg turned three in MAY. I wrote this post the week after the second party. Seven weeks ago. But at least I finally got it posted!