30th Birthday Un-Birthday Mad Hatter Tea Party

It’s Friday!  I love Fridays!  (Who doesn’t??)

I’ve been doing a bit of reminiscing today.  On a Friday just about a year ago a friend of mine and I threw a surprise birthday party for our good friend, our “third amigo.”  I moved out of state shortly after that and today my friend started her trip across country on her own move, leaving our almost-birthday girl back in NC.  These things happen, particularly with military life.  We’ll keep in touch as we have this year, make plans to meet up when we can, and have fun remembering all the good times we had together.  So let’s remember, shall we?  I’d love to share the details of the party – a Mad Hatter 30th Un-birthday Tea Party.  That’s what the birthday girl wanted.  She mentioned it to me a year before (on her 29th birthday) that it would be fun to have a Mad Hatter Tea Party for her 30th.  I’m kind of proud of myself for remembering LOL.  For a few years now I’ve thought the whole Alice in Wonderland theme is full of cute and fun ideas and I’ve tried more than once to convince my daughter that it would be a fun birthday party for her but she always votes for a differnt party theme.  I even had some ideas Pinned already.

And let’s face it – what better way to spend an afternoon than having a tea party with these crazy ladies?
So my friend and I started plotting and had the birthday girl set aside some time for a “craft day.”  First on the prep list – hats!  About a week before the party my friend and I got together to make fun little Mad Hatter type hats for everyone.

The guests got black and white fabric hats with some sort of variation on the heart (Queen of Hearts) theme for the ribbon.

The birthday girl got one a little bigger and brighter.  We used this tutorial for the hats and it worked like a charm.  We used plastic cups instead of paper and the fabric still adhered to it with the hot glue just fine.  We didn’t use the cup lids for the tops of the hats, just traced around the lip of the cup and cut a matching sized piece out of an old cereal box.  Then we attached it all to alligator clips so they would stay in our hair.  If I were to do it again I probably would have gone with headbands.  I think the hats would have stayed in place on our heads better with those.

This little guy was the only kiddo not old enough to be in school while we were working on everything.  He wasn’t a fan of us trying to get things done instead of playing with him and made it very hard for his mommy to do much.  Luckily he was in a much better mood on the day of the party and the entire time we were setting up he had that cute smile plastered on his face while he happily played in the playpen (phew!).

On to the party details!  I’m so pleased with how everything turned out.  It came together very easily and with very little expense as I tried to use what I already had or make most things ourselves.  The only things I bought specifically for the party (other than food, of course) were the mismatched tea cups and saucers and the little teapot from the thrift store.  To get the biggest effect for our efforts we kept the decorations confined to the dining table and the food display.

The clock came directly off my kitchen wall 😉  I had already taken it down and removed the hands in preparation for packing it up and it made the perfect base for the centerpiece.  Add in a few colorful flowers, the misdirection sign posts and mismatched tableware, and the bright eclectic look was pretty easy to pull off.

Each table setting was different from the rest.

And aren’t the keys adorable?!  I ran across them at JoAnn’s a couple of years ago in the dollar section with the intention of framing them somehow but haven’t done it yet.

Can’t forget the Cheshire cat!  He hung out above the pantry.  We thought about doing a playing card garland hanging from the chandelier, but we ran out of time.  We had also planned to have the Very Merry Un-birthday song playing in the background when the birthday girl arrived, but we forgot to download it and our hurried attempt to YouTube it and play it on the cell phone wasn’t quite as effective.  Oh well.  😉

On to the food!  All tea parties need lots of food in teeny tiny portions, right?  We grabbed random tea cups and mugs to use for the food display.  The giant tea cups are actually flower pots that I use for seasonal decorations.  The Happy Birthday plate was one I made years ago on one of our Saturdays with The Girls at a paint-your-own place.
The menu included: southwestern egg rolls, pigs in a blanket, buffalo wings, fruit skewers, individual 7-layer dips and chips, miniature chocolate cupcakes and tiny caramel tarts.  The teapot was filled with cold sweet tea and we also had pumpkin hot chocolate to drink.

Total success!  Our friend was very surprised (Yay!  It’s hard to keep a secret like that!) and we had so much fun no one wanted to go home.  We ended up crafting after all just to prolong the our time together that day.

I miss these two.  They are a lot of fun, hugely loyal, and taught me a lot about how to loosen up and not be so serious about life all the time.  Even grown-ups need to have tea parties once in a while, right?

Linking to:  Pretty Pintastic Party, Saturday Sharefest, BFF Open House, Friday Finds, Creative Exchange, Merry Monday, Inspire Me Monday, Celebrate it Sunday, Sundays Down Under, Made By You Monday, Your Turn to Shine, LouLou Girls, Idea Box, Best DIY Projects and Recipes Party, Link Party Palooza,