For my daughter's third birthday, she and I together decided to have a tea party--her first! The invitations were cute cards that I ordered on-line and printed on my computer at
home. It had three ladybugs having a tea party, with a turtle's back serving as the table.
It read: Our Matilda is turning Three We'll Celebrate by having tea!" along with the "tea time" address phone. Since her birthday is late March we decided to have it on the covered back patio. I got a HUGE roll of green tulle (ebay) for a song! We used it to create an green fantasy room (green is my daughter's favorite color) by draping it from the ceiling covering the patio. We then blew up balloons and attached them to various posts on the patio and made clusters of them to attach here and there. She also has a large nylon flag-type castle puppet show banner that we hung on an empty outside wall which made the space seem more "fanstasy" like. There were seven little girls and since we do not have a child's table large enough to accomodate that many I was able to rent a six-foot long child's table and seven white child-sized wooden folding chairs for around $20. I used my own cloth white tablecloth and over it I draped another layer of green tulle tying with ribbon at the ends. I bought lots of white and yellow daisies and put them in small white water pitchers that I own--they were lovely on the table against the green! I wanted the girls to have a full afternoon tea experience so I set the table with white china plates and I had picked up some white tea cups with saucers at the Salvation Army for a dollar each. I then folded white cloth cocktail napkins placed one on each plate and topped each with a pink polka dot with green maribou trim party hat (I bought these at Birthday In a Box). Each child had a silver tea spoon--I used some with teapots on the end and some silver demitasse spoons--and also placed a sugar cube that was decorated with a purple tea pot (cakeart.com) that I had custom ordered. The table was absolutely lovely! For the food I had ordered blueberry tea on line (my daughter's favorite fruit) so the girls had "real" hot tea. I added a touch of sugar to the pot when it was brewing. I served homemade raisin scones finger sandwiched of almond butter/blueberry jam and one with turkey and cheese on a three-tiered server that I had. I also served fresh blueberries and strawberries. The children were mesmerized by the entire experience! They felt very grown-up. The grownups had the same scones with jam more grown-up finger sandwiches and champagne. After tea the girls had a surprise visit from Fairy Princess Margaret. A local company provides "princesses" and "fairies" for hire--I got a $30 discount for booking early. The "Fairy" painted the faces of the girls made balloon animals and had a scavenger hunt--entertainment that lasted an hour. Afterwards we had cake--I made my own and since I cannot decorate cakes I ordered pre-made flowers from cakeart.com and my cake looked professionally made! For party favors I hit the 99cent store--each favor was a small plastic green (again her favorite color) basket with handles sort of like a grocery basket with tissue paper as a base a pair of princess shoes a ring and bracelet (Party City) and a bag of daisy seeds (the flowers used at the party). Each favor was less than $3 but looked like much more. All in all it was a beautiful party and exactly what my daughter wanted! "
