{Alice In Wonderland Unbirthday Tea Party}

My niece's birthday is 3 days after Christmas. Long story short, she gets the shaft. Anyone who has a late December birthday knows the feeling I'm sure. "Here's a present for you. It's Christmas AND birthday." Or "Here's your birthday gift, sorry it's wrapped in Christmas paper.". "We'll have your birthday party in a month. Or so...".

For years I've tried to talk her into having an "Unbirthday party". This year, I gave her no choice. I told her we were having one, and so we did.

It just so happened that last night was her exact Half Birthday. She turned 19 1/2 years old yesterday.

So, here is what I did.

My friend Elizabeth is in visiting from Texas. I put her to work. I'm SUCH a good host. She was indispensable help. 

Set up:

Decorations:

 Decorations were really inexpensive.

Tea Cups: My parents picked these up at various yard sales for about 25 cents each. Thrift stores are also an excellent resource.

Cards: I bought these at a $1 store. They were 2 packs for $1. I punched holes in them and made garlands. I also did individual cards and hung from the tree. I scattered them on the tables and used them as place cards as well.

Signs: I simply cut poster board into arrow shapes and wrote 'fancy' on them. I had 'this way', 'that way', 'wrong way', and 'tea party'. The 'This Way to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party' was printed on my computer.

Hanging Decorations: The cards, as I mentioned, the hanging flower decorations came from the $1 store, the paper lanterns are the only thing that were very expensive. They were $6.99/3.

Misc: Whil-a-gigs were from the $1 store, as were the pink flamingo stir sticks. I didn't get a photo, but I had 3 tall stuffed, bendable flowers,  over sized dice, and also a caterpillar. All from the $1 store.

Tags: I made Eat Me & Drink Me tags for all the food and drink (and tea cups). They are very quick and easy to make on the computer. The Drink Me tags were tied on, while the Eat Me tags were attached to bamboo skewers.

Food:

For snacks I had cheese crackers, watermelon, meringues, chocolate cookies, and mini chocolate pies. I also had an assortment of candy in jars that didn't get photographed. There were also chips of course, because teenagers.

Elizabeth's daughter has Celiac Disease, so I tried to keep many things gluten free.

The chocolate cookies are a flourless cookie. You can find that recipe at King Arthur Flour.

The meringue mushrooms were a lot of fun. Everyone loved them. You can find a recipe here.I didn't put mine together as they suggested though. I dipped the stems in chocolate to glue the caps on. Cause chocolate tastes good. The end. Mine wouldn't stand upright on the plate. I used a bit of chocolate to glue them down. I don't recommend that. LOL.

We made cheese checkerboards & spelled out Alice words with Cheese-It Scrabble Junior crackers (well, Elizabeth did all the work!).

The pies were a chocolate pie. Easy & peasy. Made with Jello Pudding. They are mini because it's Alice in Wonderland, after all. I used the adorable little Keebler Mini Graham Crusts. Piped on whipped cream, added sprinkles, and a cherry.

And... since it's a Tea Party

Yes, we actually had tea. Bean loves his tea "British Style" with cream. None of the others had tried it that way, so they all gave it a go... They liked it!


By the way.. it rained. I was broken hearted, but at least everyone got to see the set up & it didn't rain long or hard, just enough to make us have to move it all under the cover of the back deck.

After the rain cleared, they got into the Photo Booth Props. Yes, Elizabeth and I made new ones for this party. See my tutorial.

Elizabeth and family had to leave by this time, so you'll only see my goofy teens.

 I had a couple relay races planned, a Tea Cup Race where they would fill a tea cup and run to the other end of the yard and pour it in a bucket. Team with the most water would win. Also, a Humpty Dumpty Run (aka, egg on a spoon race), but alas... rain.

They did, however, play....

Croquet!

No matter how bad they were at it, and believe me they were bad, they had a LOT of fun.

It was made even more challenging by the wet grass. LOL.

So there you have it. A VERY Happy Unbirthday was had by my niecey!

Plus, one of her gifts was a day out with ME, so, yeah... she scored. Ha.

Tina

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