Alice in Wonderland 14th UnBirthday Tea Party

MaryGrace has a different kind of personality from most of the members of our family--she's a little quieter, a little less feisty, a little sweeter and more ladylike. We may not always understand our calmer, nicer sister, but we were determined that she'd get exactly what she wanted for her birthday, and what she wanted was a small tea party. We tend to go for larger groups of people at our parties, but this one only had 11 people in attendance in all, which made it a very small party indeed (given that there's already 4 of us with just the sisters who still live here).

The Alice in Wonderland theme was a late addition to the party design. She wanted a tea party, but about a week before the event, decided that making it an Alice in Wonderland themed party would make it even more fun.

And of course we all dressed on-theme, with MaryGrace as the Cheshire Cat, Rebekah as the Mad Hatter, and little Sarah as Alice herself. I was the Queen of Hearts, as you might notice in other photos.

We had our tea in the middle of the afternoon, meaning that a full meal was not a necessity. We made a chocolate and a cheese fondue, had a variety of dippers, as well as a few other treats like these rice krispie treats:

Our usual party philosophy can be seen clearly in the rice krispie treats above. We love themed parties and all the cute references that they allow...but we generally try to keep the party budget to be spent on actual food for our guests and when it comes to the cutesy themed things that we delight in--we make do with what we have. I would have preferred to create rice krispie treats in the suit of hearts, since that's the most important one in the Alice story, but that's a ridiculously small point and we already had black icing but not red icing...so spades, it was.

The red and white flowers were in homage to the white roses painted red.

We went all out, trying to make the table look as quirkily elegant as possible, using whatever table finery we had. Note that there's a plastic cover over the white tablecloth. This was a fondue party with teens and preteens--the plastic cover was definitely necessary. :) We had two kinds of tea, strawberry tea as well as jasmine green tea, and we also had sherbet punch.

And it wouldn't be an Alice party without some traditional "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" labels, now would it?

 For party activities, after we had had our fill of chocolate and tea, we retired to the table of craft supplies, where we used origami paper and followed MaryGrace's instructions to make an origami rose--a venture we were all more or less successful in. That was my first time ever trying origami and I now have a greater awe of the art of folded paper!

After the origami lesson, we had a coloring competition, in honor of MaryGrace's love of coloring. We put the DVD of the classic Disney cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland in the DVD player, and had a fun time coloring away while watching the movie. Watching the film at the party ended up being a good choice--several of the guests had never even heard of the story or seen the film, so the theme of the party certainly made much more sense to them as they saw details from the party showing up in the movie. And I enjoyed it because it's probably been 15 years or so since I've seen that movie!

Angel was the one to choose a winner for the coloring contest, and the winner went home with a t-shirt bearing the Mad Hatter's Tea Party scene from Wonderland, which we thought was perfect, given the party!

MaryGrace loved her UnBirthday (true, since the party didn't take place on her actual birthday), and was inspired to draw this in her sketchbook when it was all over.

I think my favorite part was the strawberries and chocolate fondue...

Another fun party down in the archives. What's your favorite party theme?