We're fairly social with members of our church (LDS - hence the no tea), but we live pretty scattered apart from each other in New York, especially where WE in particular live. However, there's been a recent freaky weird huge fantastic influx of little girls Shelby's age all moving into or near OUR little suburb of Cicero. Finally! Yay! So, this idea started out as a playdate and kind of evolved into a somewhat major production. Most of you know me, I'm a born party planner. It's hard for me to stop at a mere playdate.
Shelby was ecstatic at the idea of having a girlie party. She's way too used to boy playdates that come over and play videogames.
For starters, we couldn't have a proper tea party without proper tea party attire (though many guests showed up in pretty dresses!), so we passed out tea party hats and then had everyone make bracelets!
Because every single guest RSVP'd YES (another yay!), I had to draft some moms into service - thank you for your help, moms!!!
Seriously, have you ever seen anything cuter than all these little girls in their hats in the sunshine? *melts (and not from the heat)*
We had a staff of dapperly-dressed butlers, ready to serve. Here's social director Butler Noah, directing arriving guests to the back yard.
And this is devastatingly handsome Butler Connor: *swoons*
When my butlers weren't posing for photographs, they actually did do butler work serving our esteemed guests heart-shaped and very British jam sandwiches.
BUT, they didn't actually use their British-accented "Yes, Madame" and "Very Good, Madame" phrases that I'd been coaching them on. The Queen Mother (that would be me) then cut their pay (but at least it wasn't Off With Their Heads!).
And what's this??? A unauthorized butler break!??!
Yes, Butler Noah, you ARE actually wearing the evidence of your bad deed all over your face (the jam):
Cousin Kimberly from San Antonio, Texas, was visiting us for the week, so she was a guest of honor at our Tea Party, especially seeing as how SHE had never had a tea party thrown for her (as she informed her tea-party-ball-dropping mother who was cruising in the Bahamas and therefore understandably most likely could care less). Kimberly, your childhood is now complete. You may now graduate high school next year, finish college, and go on to become a fabulous fashion editor. As long as you live in NYC and I can come visit you whenever I want, I'll throw you as many tea parties as you want!
The Queen Mother and Princess Shelby. Shelby DID inform me, however, that a princess ranks higher than a Queen. *sniffs* Maybe in Shelbyfantasyland, you silly delusional little girl.
An unplanned and unexpected activity at our Tea Party was the appeal of our old playground set. All of a sudden, it had new life and love (since our kids rarely use it anymore). And, in retrospect looking at this photo, was probably dangerously close to its maximum capacity. Eh, all's well that ends well! Do you see Noah in there with all the girls?
SOOOO typical of Noah, our social bee - abandoning responsibility in favor of having fun and partying. I won't mention how many blasted notes he brought home from his first grade teacher this past year because of that exact behavior. Woe unto his future second grade teacher, I'm afraid.
We played musical chairs. I don't really like musical chairs because I hate making kids feel like losers, but I found some iTunes Disney Princess Musical Chairs Tea Party music - yes, I'm serious, that DOES exist. So, we played musical chairs! And afterwards I had two little girls come up to me raving about the music. The Disney music, anyway. I did have Baby Einstein classical music playing the entire party to add to the ambiance, but that went unnoticed and unappreciated. Hmmpff. I had to endure 2 hours of listening to classical music (which I do NOT enjoy) for naught. *sniff*
Too-cute Butler Connor cheering on the musical chair winners.
Found along with Disney Princess Musical Chairs Music was a Disney Princess dance contest song. Score again! But we decided not to turn it into a contest, and instead just had a super-cute little dance session.
What you didn't see in the first photo was Butler Mark leading the girls in the dancing. O M Gee.
I was deeply saddened to find that instead of videotaping Mark doing the Tea Party dance with all the girls, that I actually did NOT. Because that would have been, in the words of American Express, priceless. I had footage of me carrying around the camera talking about lemon treats instead. EPIC. FAIL. That will haunt me the rest of my days. It's SUCH a loss for our family memories, Mark dancing to Disney Princess Tea Party dance music. *sigh*
Another activity I'd planned was for the Butlers to give proper tours of the "grounds."
That worked for about a MINUTE before the vehicle was mobbed, Butler Connor was ousted, and the grounds tours were taken over by feisty Tea Party princesses, all wanting to go four-wheeling instead. (Anybody watch The Walking Dead? Yeah, it was kind of like that.)
Butler Mark had to make several rescue trips (rescuing the plants and fences and garden, that is) from the rogue kamikaze crazy-driving princesses.
And in the end, does anything mark a successful kid activity more than this photo? She was out for three hours.
Thank you to everyone who came and helped and participated and turned a simple playdate into a smashing Tea Party!
