Mad Hatter Tea Party

I promised you a tea party, and despite the horrific events of yesterday's bombing, I'm going to post it anyway.  My heart goes out to those affected by the tragedy.  But perhaps at times like this, focusing on something light, fun, and happy will help.

So here we go.

My middle daughter had the unfortunate luck to be born on Christmas Eve (it was a full moon--what can I say?).  Which means she has had a Christmas-themed birthday for the last eight years.  This year I promised her something else.  Because we were already doing the Alice in Wonderland christmas trees, we decided to go with a Mad Hatter tea party.  My first stop--Pinterest, of course.  Here's some of what I found:

Image via Pattimedarisculea.

Image via Lillycottage

Easy enough--right?  Taylor Armstrong on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills spent $65,000 on her daughter Kennedy's 4th birthday Mad Hatter party.  I am SURE I can get the same look for less than $50.  Right?

Here is my result (sorry for the crappy phone pictures--didn't know then I would be blogging this):

So how do you do it?  Start with a list.  What are the things I need to collect?  China, teapots, flowers, frames, cakes, tea, lanterns, and most of all, color.

Mismatched china:  Thrift store all the way.  Pick the brightest plates and teacups you can find.  I didn't pay more than $1 for any china piece on the table.  I added two party napkins to tie each place setting together: black and white check under the teacups and crazy floral in the teacups.

Color:  The pink and green tablecloths are my girls' bedsheets, but you could accomplish the same thing by using plastic dollar-store tablecloths.  The black and silver table runner is a mylar tablecloth folded in two from Zurchers.  It was in the Nascar section.  Placemats are colored scrapbook paper.

Chinese lanterns:  cheating--got them in Chinatown years ago.  If I didn't have them I would have bought paper ones at the dollar store.  

The mismatched chairs:  I just picked a different chair or trunk from every room in my house.

In the closeup below you can see more details.   The mini cakes were grocery-store giant cupcakes decorated with Christmas themes.  I bought some ready-made icing tubes and covered up the holly, santas, and snowmen with flowers and swirls.  The flowers are dollar-store flowers in my kitchen utensil holder with curled green pipe cleaners stuck in.  Wrap pipe cleaners around a pencil to get curly sticks.

The picture frames:  each place setting had a different color picture frame with the girl's name in them.  They were $4 at Hobby Lobby.  Expensive-but they also doubled as the party gift.  The girls were so excited when they got to take the crazy picture frames home.

See the dormouse below?  That is one of my dog's toys (I know-gross) in a thrift-store sugar bowl.

 My husband went with me on one of my thrift-store forays (he complained the whole time that it stunk in the store) and found the pink teapot.  He was so proud of himself.

The red and white toothpicks below have hearts on the end.  They were at the dollar store and the girls used them to stab finger foods.

We had the movie playing in the background.

To keep my girls busy before the party started, I had them make Cheshire Cat grins out of copy paper and and bamboo skewers.

 The birthday girl, holding her playing card crackers (Ritz with cream cheese piped in playing card symbols).

Cheshire Cat smiles in action.

Food:  peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, crackers, pepperoni and salami, cheese cut into playing card shapes with cookie cutters, tuxedo strawberries, crackers, tea, cake.  All of these were served on the fancy-schmancy 3-tiered crystal plates that I didn't buy for $100 each.  I made them out of thrift-store glass plates (picked three sizes at $1-2 each), stacked Dollar Tree candlesticks between, and hot glued together.   

I think it was a success--don't you?