Afternoon Tea Party

Zoe's birthday was last week and I had promised her a birthday party.  You see, I was great at having birthday parties for her in the past.  She had a Pink Poodles in Paris first birthday party, a Circus themed second birthday and the mother of all parties, an ice cream sundae parlor themed party for her third birthday. After that third birthday, I was exhausted.

The following year, for her fourth, we were in Texas visiting family, so we had a pool party at my dad's house and bought Hello Kitty party supplies.  I got off really easy on that one.

Last year, for her fifth, we had just moved overseas and were still staying in temporary lodging.  It was very low-key.  I bought a few tinker bell decorations to hang while she was sleeping so she could feel a little special when she awakened the next morning.  It wasn't a great celebration as we were busy trying to find a house, still without all of our things, and essentially homeless.

This year I promised she could have a party.  We settled on a tea party theme (what better theme when in England?) and went to work.  From the moment we moved into our house last summer, I envisioned a garden tea party out amongst the flowers with twinkling fairy lights hanging from trees.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate.

Even though we had to cram five little girls and their mothers indoors, I think the party went well and Zoe had a great time!

Here is the invitation I made using Photoshop with all of the personal information blocked out:

I made place cards using Photoshop as well:

Luckily, there are loads of antique and second-hand stores here and I was able to find tea trios for fairly cheap, so I purchased one for each girl for about £5 ($7.50) per set.

 In order to make all of the chairs uniform, I found some Cath Kidston pillow cases on ebay and used them as chair covers.  The bows came from The Range.

The bunting hanging on the cabinet was also purchased at The Range.

The paper lanterns and plastic tablecloth came from Oriental Trading (thankfully, I ordered them back in June, because they took almost two months to get here in the mail)

 The cookies were made by a local baker- a military wife with a phenomenal talent.

The plates and napkins came from Oriental Trading as well.

When the party was going to be outdoors, I had planned to set up a blue backdrop with a bunting on it and let the girls dress up and have a photo booth.  Since the party had to be moved indoors, I had the bucket of supplies on the side in case someone wanted to wear something.  They really didn't wear anything during the party, but after the party was over, everyone picked something from the bucket and I took them outside for a group shot. (it had stopped raining).  I do not have the permission of any of the girls' parents to post their photo, so just know it is cute, but will not be included in this post.

The paper bunting came from Oriental trading too.  It was supposed to be a cake topper but looked silly on the cake, so I decided to prop it up as a backdrop for the tea.  Just an hour before the party started, I was trying to figure out how to make them stand up when I remembered I had pink and white pearl cupcake sprinkles, so I poured them in wine glasses to anchor the bunting.  The tea I served was regular black tea, rose, Earl Grey and an herbal tea for our caffeine-free guests.

I had scones with lemon curd, raspberry preserve or strawberry wine preserves along with shortbread biscuits and homemade pound cake and lemon cookies.  On the sandwich tray, I had nutella sandwiches (the ONLY sandwich apart from pb&j that Zoe will eat), turkey sandwiches and chicken salad with fresh dill using greek yogurt in place of mayonnaise.

 The same girl that made the cookies also made the cake.

Each girl took two cookies and a china trio home as her party favor.

 I loved this photo I captured of Zoe blowing out her candles.  I blurred the girl in the background's face as I do not have permission to post it.

It was no ice cream party, but I think as a whole, it went well, and Zoe was pleased.

I hope to get back into blogging more soon and apologize to my friends and family that are keeping up with us through my blog.  The problem I have run into is that the best time for me to blog is at night and our internet is so slow at night, that it isn't worth it.  I just sat here for over an hour while the above photos loaded.  And now it is past 11pm and I have to get up in the morning.  The internet is considerably faster during the daytime, but I don't have much time for blogging during the day.  Again, my apologies- I hope to figure it out and start blogging more so my family back in the US can follow our adventures.

Ice Cream Sundae Sunday

Yesterday was Zoë's birthday party. It all started with a dress I found on ebay last spring that reminded me of neapolitan ice cream. I decided at that moment that she would have an ice cream party and the colors would be pink, brown and cream-neapolitan colors. I do believe this is the most fun I have had planning a birthday party!

To start us off, let me refresh your memory by re-posting the invitation I made for the party:



I usually hang my scrapbook layouts from this wire on display, but took them down for the party and made these little ice cream cones. The sundae in the middle is cut from my Cricut Sweet Treats cartridge and the "sundae" letters are cut using the Cricut Storybook cartridge. The little cones I made by cutting a 4" scalloped circle, running it through my Cuttlebug using the mosaic tile embossing folder to give it the waffled texture and then rolling them up in cone shapes. I then stuffed them with confetti.

These plastic cones were a Dollar Tree find. I stuffed them with confettin, ice cream shaped erasers and ice cream themed bubbles plus other small treats for the treat bags.

Okay first let me say how excited I was to find rock candy and Pop Rocks on my trip to North Carolina last weekend. How vintage! The pink ice cream cones holding the straws and rock candy, the cone holding the spoons and the ice cream painted container holding the maraschino cherries were from JoAnn's. I saw them back in the spring and patiently waited all summer until they went on clearance. The ice cream tray I found on deep discount at Michael's last weekend. After it rang up, it cost me $2 and some change!! WOOHOO!

I was going to make petit fours and cover them in pourable fondant, but upon my mother's arrival, she informed me that all the rage back home were these things called Cake Balls. Basically, you bake a sheet cake, crumble it up and mix it with frosting and shape into little balls and freeze. Then you melt almond bark and dip them in it. I had never heard of them and we quickly figured out why no one makes them here. They don't sell almond bark in grocery stores here like they do back in Texas. My mom said WalMart and every grocery store has it in the baking section, but we went to two WalMarts and four different grocery stores and none of them had it. Later a friend told me that I would have to find a candy specialty store to buy it here. Weird. Anyway, thankfully, Mom brought some almond bark with her and we had enough for the party. They were a huge hit and looked great on my cupcake display stand.

I think this was the most fun for me. I was so excited about making these jars for the toppings. I got the jars at the Christmas Tree Shop and used Cricut Storybook cartridge to cut ouy the tags. I printed the labels on my computer using the Candice font which I thought was adorable and reminded me of ice cream and candy. I also bought a straw dispenser and put Pepperidge Farm Pirouettes (rolled wafers) in it.

Since we had the cake balls, we didn't feel we needed a large cake. Just one big enough to stick three candles in and let Zoë blow them out.

I made these decorations using tissue paper and a Martha Stewart tutorial online.



You can't have an ice cream party without also having ice cream floats, so I filled a bucket with ice and had grape, key lime, orange cream, cream soda and root beer. Yum!!



If you look in the corner of the photo on the left side, I had a Little Dipper crockpot plugged in keeping the hot fudge sauce warm.

And here is the girl of the hour wearing the tiara that was a last-minute impulse buy. I went to Party City to pick up her balloons that morning and that tiara was in my line of vision hollering, "Hey, Sucker, BUY ME! You know you want to!!"

Everyone seemed to have a good time and the children all left hyped up on sugar. But most importantly, Zoë loved her " Ice Cream Happy Birthday"

Happy 3rd birthday, my sweet girl!

I'm linking this with Dumb Mom's Mom Tip Tuesday. My tip? How to throw an awesome ice cream party! Follow the link and see her tip on how to successfully travel in the car with kids and if you have a tip, link up!