I'm proud of myself for keeping the party as minimal as possible. The food wasn't particularly elaborate, and I didn't plan any games, since the kids have just as much fun (or more) just playing, anyway. We only invited four kids (three came)--I thought a tea party with a ton of kids, many of whom would be boys, would just be too rowdy. So, we ended up with a nice group of four girls. I thought it was perfect--it was a big enough group that it felt like a special occasion, but they weren't difficult to handle.
We put accessories on the entryway table for the girls to put on when they came in, so they could be completely fancy. The accessories doubled as party favors.
For the tea party itself, I got cute little tiered trays from Amazon. I served mini cupcakes, cookies, little sandwiches, apple slices, and baby carrots. I actually BOUGHT THE COOKIES FROM THE STORE, which felt quite sacrilegious to me, but I really didn't want to stress myself out and overdo it.
Of course I got a tablecloth, plates, and napkins from Walmart, but you can't really have a tea party without teacups, right? So I got adorable paper teacups from Amazon, too. They were cute and fancy but not breakable!
The dish in the middle is one I already had, and the banner on the wall was a leftover from a past birthday.
For the "tea," I made hot chocolate and served it from the slow cooker. I wanted to allow the girls to pour their own, because I knew how much they would love it, but I couldn't find an appropriate (small, plastic) teapot.
The girls had a lot of fun! I was debating whether to let Sierra stay for the party because I knew that Rhonda would prefer to play with her friends without her sister intruding. But Sierra was so excited seeing everything get set up, I let her stay just for the tea party portion. Once everyone ran off to play, I sent Sierra off with Doug to Chick-fil-A. I think it worked out perfectly.
The girls opened presents, then they played for a while. I'm curious: what is your policy on opening the presents (like actually taking them out of their packaging to play with them) at the birthday party? I let the kids open stuff at the last party, and it was pandemonium--they fought over everything. At this party, I didn't let them open a single thing, and Rhonda was quite annoyed with me. How do you approach this?
Overall, it was a great party. Rhonda loved it!
Woohoo, I found your blog! Summer asked me today if any of my siblings had a blog, and I remembered that you had told me that you had a blog and for some reason I never read it, so I went through my old emails and found the link. I think I'll be reading this regularly now.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember ever having an issue about taking presents out of the packaging at birthday parties. I think Summer is usually more excited about the party activities than about playing with what she just received. But we don't have the parties at our house, either, which seems like more of a setting that would prompt Summer to want to try out new toys.
Good job buying cookies from the store! Just because you CAN make fantastic cookies at home doesn't mean you HAVE to! You just have more options.
Thank you! I'm glad I did!
DeleteI guess it does make it easier if the party isn't at your house. Maybe if I had had activities to distract the kids, they wouldn't have been so intent on opening the presents! Hah!
I always wait until the very end of the party to open gifts. That way, as soon as they're open the kids' parents are arriving, and the birthday child doesn't have to wait too long to play with the new things. That strategy has never failed me.
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