To be honest, I wasn’t planning on throwing a party for Taylor this year. I was thinking we could hold off for one more year before we starting throwing friend parties for her, but on her birthday she turned to me and said, “Mom, I CAN’T WAIT for my friends to come over for my birthday party” I knew I had to throw something together. So a week later we had a fun tea party for the birthday girl and she was IN HEAVEN.
The key to a fun party, in my opinion, is to keep it simple when it comes to games and activities and find a balance of “fun themed” and “kids just want cake and presents” when it comes to the decor. Are kids usually just fine with cake, presents and some friends over? Sure! And some years that’s what our kids’ parties look like. But there is nothing quite like the look of awe and excitement on your kid’s face when they come downstairs and we do the reveal of the decorated space for their party. And the excitement leading up to it as they watch you put things together for their upcoming day of celebrating them. I LOVE it! With that being said, no need to go over the top, because again, they just want their friends to come celebrate THEM for a day. Balance, right? Well…here is what my version of a balanced tea party looks like 🙂
The first thing we did at the party was get all dolled up for the tea party. I provided these “fancy” hats for the girls to wear. I’ve seen the idea of having a table where they can decorate their hats with bows and flowers and such but in the face of trying to simplify things and with only a couple days until the party I decided to keep it simple and just have the hats plain.
The older girls also painted their nails, did the hair of those who didn’t want to wear a hat, and helped them pick out a dress they could put on. With 5 girls in our house we have PLENTY of dress up options so we just brought down all of our dress up buckets and saved spending any money there. If this is not the case for you, I suggest just recommending the party attendees come in fancier attire so your money can go towards other aspects of the party.
Of course the birthday girl had something unique waiting for her on her chair to add to her outfit. We’ve had this one for years and I’m pretty sure it’s from Walmart but here is another great option.
Once everyone was looking and feeling their best, it was time for our tea party to begin. Everyone sat down and we walked around serving everyone and making sure they were all feeling extra special.
All the items we walked around and served them. Fruit with an option of dip to go with it. This is our favorite fruit dip that we make and enjoy multiple times a year because…YUM! Always love an excuse to make it! We also offered 2 types of finger sandwiches: the traditional cucumber or Nutella. For the cucumber sandwich I kept it simple and bought a container of pre-made tzatziki and spread that on bread with some thinly sliced cucumbers and called it good. Here is a recipe for the more traditional way of making a cucumber sandwich. We also walked around with this adorable tea kettle to pour them their “tea” which was actually pink lemonade, birthday girls choice. 🙂
I didn’t think twice when it came to buying that tea kettle; it’s adorable, it was the perfect touch to the party, and it’s practical because we’ll actually use it again. It also looks very cute on display on our dining room shelf in between uses.
Perhaps my favorite part of the party set up were these PERFECT disposable tea cup sets! We have gone through so many plastic tea set over the years with all of our girls and they end up lost, chewed on my dogs, or they outgrow them so fast because of how small they are. Our kids take after their father and are notorious for dropping glass so the real deal was out too. I was so excited when I found this cute paper option.
The kids did not care that they were not real. They were “clinking” their cups all throughout the meal, which I’m pretty sure is not actually done at tea time but they were loving it so we rolled with it, and feeling so fancy drinking with their pinky up and asking for refills.
Total win in my book! And I love that it came with plates, cups and napkins. I always have table cloths on hand so the decor for the party came together quick…win!
Birthday girl requested pink and yellow cupcakes. Big sister, Cam, whipped together a batch of our favorite vanilla frosting and when it was time to decorate the cupcakes we went with a simple flower to keep with the floral theme of the tea cup set. Our 14 year old and 11 year hold helped me decorate them and although they aren’t the fanciest we were very happy with how they turned out, and of course a bunch of 4-6 year olds didn’t care either. My favorite way to display cupcakes is always with a tier tray. This has been one of our most used Amazon purchases ever.
One other treat we had were chocolate dipped wafers which we dipped ourselves. We used tiny heart and flower molds we had on hand to make some cute chocolates to put around the table with the leftover chocolate after dipping. We also got a bag of Mystical Animal Crackers.
I bought two $7 bouquets at Walmart and split them between two vases to add the finishing touch to the table. All in all, super happy how this came together and am very thankful for Amazon prime which made a party thrown together so quickly possible.
The only game we had was Tea Party Bingo. I was hoping to find the Valentine’s Day m&ms for them to use as markers but apparently her party is a little too early in January, because although there was a lot of V-Day decor coming out I couldn’t find the m&ms. Oh well, small insignificant detail. Putting together this game BY FAR took the most time, but they had fun and I feel confident we will play this again with the girls so worth it. I made it super cheap on my Etsy page so you won’t have to spend that much time doing it yourself or pay $5-$7 for a game you’ll use potentially once. Hopefully it helps! If you have time for another game I highly recommend something simple like dance freeze. It’s free, kids get their energy out and you can make it as short or long as you’d like depending on the amount of time you have. We keep parties for 4-7 year olds around 1-1/2 hrs.
Last, but certainly not least, is the party favors. I don’t know why I love these so much, but party favors are always so fun to me. I love that it teaches your kids to do something nice for their friends as a thank you for coming and supporting and I love the excitement of each kid as they get to take something home. What can I say, my love languages are acts of kindness AND giving gifts 🙂
As for what was in the bags, I got most of the items at Walmart. The smoothie chapsticks, mini bath bombs, candy necklace, squishies, ring pops, and fold up hair brushes were all from their. All but the ring pops were in the party favor/party section of Walmart. I should also mention that in the same section, they had this kit of hair extension clips, bracelets, rings and necklaces which we had at the dress up table and they got to wear those home too. Perhaps the best item in the bag though were these tea party bracelets that went SO perfectly with the theme.
If you too find cute mini bath bombs you want to add to your party favors here are some free tags if needed. What I found was individually wrapped but then came in a box of 4. So when I took them out of the box to put in the bags they had no label on them and I wanted to make sure they were clear on what they were. I know they don’t go perfectly with the theme but they were so cute and I felt it went with the whole fancy undertone of the party. I mean, a bath is a bath but a bath with a bath bomb is a fancy bath.
Here are the tags I made to tie onto their goodie bags.
I hope some of this is helpful. More than anything, I hope you have fun planning your little one’s special day. I love making these memories with our kids; making them feel special is one of the greatest gifts we can give them and no matter what you do, they will feel the love you have for them for putting it all together! Happy party planning!
xo,
Jenny
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