Deni's Tea Party Birthday!

Our baby is four! Oh how time flies!
Our curly haired, dimpled cheeked, dark eyed little princess is no longer a toddler. Sigh...
Deni is by far the "girliest" girl I have. She prefers all things pink, loves her baby dolls and dress up clothes and of coarse, her tea sets. So we thought it would be a great idea to honor her Birthday by inviting her friends for "high tea".
Deni was thrilled about this idea and I would have been more thrilled if we had thought of it a little sooner than two weeks before her Birthday! So with little time I went straight to work and started the hunt for tea party decor.
We decided on a sort of "shabby chic" look which made it easy to buy cheap. I was able to mix and match items while still making them look like they actually went together!
I found several prints of dollar fabric at Wal-Mart which I made the table linens, napkins, curtains, bows and backdrops out of. Needless to say the first week of party prep went to sewing and making invitations! Here are a few pics of those:

The invites I made using my scrap booking stuff (and borrowing the teapot & teacup template from a wonderful friend who has just about every scrapbook template ever made!) I made "tea bags" out of vellum and after chalking them brown I printed and glued on the party info on one side and wrote "In celebration of Deni's 4th Birthday" on the other side. Then I attached an actual tea bag string on them and put them inside the teapot. I thought the girls would get a kick out of pulling the tea bag out of the teapot!

Napkins and bows... I found the place mats at Ross for a little bit of nothing! I topped off the table with some old doilies I had stashed away and a flower arrangement I made with clearance flowers I found and stuck them in a tea bin I already had. I borrowed lots of stuff too. My Aunt loaned me the privacy screens which I covered in white and soft green fabric to add a more intimate feel since this was all set up in my living room! I also had friends at work who were kind enough to loan me some chair covers, appetizer plates with tea cups and gold colored silverware. To top it all off I found some paper lanterns for a touch of whimsy!Now onto the baking....

The baking was a bit stressful because I couldn't make most of it until the day before. So needless to say Thursday and Friday night I was up until 3a.m. baking. I don't know how people who cook for a living can walk after being on their feet that long! Kudos to them! There were a few things I cut off the menu due to lack of time. It ended up being a good thing because I still ended up with left overs!
Here is the menu:

First pic/top row: chocolate cupcakes with strawberry dark chocolate ganache and buttercream icing. First pic/bottom row: Cream cheese fruit tarts. Second pic top & middle rows: vanilla cupcakes with chocolate ganache filling and buttercream frosting & gumpaste flowers. Second pic bottom row: Almond flavored petite fours. Third pic: Banana cupcakes with dark chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting topped w/chocolate dipped banana chips.
And of coarse "tea" (dark chocolate hot cocoa) and Milk and water with lemon.
Here is the whole set up:

Each girl got her picture taken with the Birthday girl. Here is Sage and her BFF Kinzi (notice the matching aprons they wore as they were the servers of the event).

I had to stick these other two pics in here because they were just too cute!

Here is Deni and Mazie and one of True being a camera hog!

We also made candy necklaces out of tulle and a few different taffys, gums and smarties. I didn't get picks of those sorry!

Each girl got to go home with their own flea market tea cup and goody bag filled with candy & bubbles, a head band and a framed picture of them with the Birthday girl!

I think everyone had a great time. It's something we would like to do again maybe for mother's day or something. Sage is already thinking about doing a "Mad tea party" themed birthday for her next years birthday.

Over all it was a lot of fun but I'm glad it's over! Now I have to get to cleaning up all that mess so I can start on Halloween!