A Surprise Birthday Tea Party

Sounds fancy, huh?

Our now 4 year old has a bit of an obsession with tea parties.  Every time we come home from somewhere she asks, "Is that the tea party?" about our house.  Then, when we go inside, I'm supposed to say, "Oh, thank you for coming to my tea party, I'm so glad you could make it!"  So, as her birthday approached it was obvious that she needed a tea party.  And, since we've been playing a lot of "you jump out, then I'll jump out, and you yell SURPRISE!" lately, it clearly needed to be a surprise tea party.

I found these darling invitations online, but, to tell ya the truth, didn't order them in time.  When I invited everyone I suggested little-girl-tea party-fashions and my very obliging guests didn't disappoint.

photo borrowed from my older sister, Jennifer

After the big surprise, I took the birthday girl up to her room to change into a party dress and hat.  She was a little shell-shocked, so that also let her decompress a little and get into a party mood.

My sisters were generous enough to pick up some teacup and saucer sets from thrift stores and I put out the fancy serving dishes and silver.  I have a set of demitasse cups and saucers from a garage sale that the kids used.  I loved the shabby-fancy look of all the mismatched sets.  And, I've really been enjoying drinking my coffee out of a different pretty cup every day.  I placed paper doilies on the saucers to make it a little fancier, too.

Our menu was:

• assorted teas (of course!) with lemon, milk, and sugar cubes
• strawberry lemonade and coffee
• chicken salad tea sandwiches
• cream puffs
• fresh fruit
• relish tray
• strawberry shortcake for the cake

Other tea party standbys that I considered were: scones, crumpets, assorted cookies, cheese and crackers, and soup.  I also considered different varieties of tea sandwiches like flavored cream cheese, egg salad, and cucumber.  And, wouldn't it be fun to use pb&j's or fluffernutters cut up all fancy-like?

The next day, my big girl told me it was a good tea party and asked if we could do it again.  I declare that success!