Pink Princess Tea Party

My daughter turned 4 in August. When I was growing up my favorite thing was planning parties. I think I started planning my next party within days of my last one. My mom always made my birthday cakes herself. Many times they were the character pan cakes covered in stars, but I thought they were wonderful! It's one of my happiest childhood memories so I want to give that same thing to my kids. Since I do cake decorating as a side business making the cakes myself isn't too hard.

Paige is a girly girl so when we decided on a princess party it wasn't a big surprise. From the initial decision of the princess party we decided that a tea party would be fun. I sent out store bought invitations telling everyone to wear their princess outfits. When each girl arrived they walked through a doorway covered in white toule and pink and purple balloons. Then once inside each girl got to have her nails painted and a princess temporary tattoo. The girls loved all the pampering and the cost to me was minimal. I borrowed pink lip towels from a Mary Kay friend and used a small child's card table that I borrowed from a different friend and I covered it in a thick white towel. I used a buffer, nail file, fingernail polish remover and nail polish that I already owned. The tattoos cost a couple dollars. Once each girl was done with her manicure she got to pick out a pretty necklace from the necklace tree and go into the breakfast nook where we had other adults in there to help with making foam crown door hangers. There were sticker gems and other princess sticker foam pieces along with a ribbon to make it a door hanger. Cost on the door hangers was less than $5. Once the manicures were all completed and all of the crowns were done then we moved on to games. I took a piece of posterboard and drew a frog prince with markers. I used some scraps of red paper that I already had from other craft projects and made lips. I pinned the poster of the frog to a bulletin board that we had and used push pins for the blindfolded kids to pin the kiss on the frog. The girls thought that was fun. Then we settled in for a story. The Princess and the Pea. All the girls were sitting on pillows on the floor during the story. Then after the story we played the Princess and the Pea game. One at a time the girls had to close their eyes while I hid a tennis ball under one of the pillows. Then the girls had to "find" the "pea" by sitting on the pillows. If you have older kids just use a smaller pea to make it tougher. Once each girl found the "pea" she was awarded a giant "wand" that I made by punching out silver stars and stapling them to the end of giant pixie sticks filled with fairy dust. Wink. Wink. Everyone loved the wands. Then we moved to the Tea Party portion of the party where all of the girls found a place at the mini table decorated with a pink cloth tablecloth and real china dishes shaped like pansies (all borrowed). It's amazing what friends have laying around that they rarely use. I made mini finger sandwiches using small cookie cutters into stars and hearts and flowers. I also did triangles for the ham and cheese sandwiches because they were harder to cut with the cutters. No crusts of course. I also did some spirals made by putting whipped cream cheese onto a large tortilla wrap and then thinly sliced ham and then I rolled it up and cut them into slices and stuck colored toothpicks into them. You could use fancy toothpicks if you want. Then I had fresh fruit in a bowl. I also made petit fours which they had with their tea party. For Paige I made a teapot cake and stuck four candles in the top for her to blow out. We then cut up the teapot cake and had it with ice cream. Everyone was full by this point. I also had princess mints in bowls around the house and had paper princess cups filled with pink and purple M&M's and in that I stuck mini wands made using small stars and regular size pixie sticks. Those were a big hit with the grown ups. The specialty colored M&M's are expensive and truly I don't think it made a big enough impact for the price. Just a lesson I learned the hard way. We opened presents after cake. The favor bags were made out of toulle and ribbon and were draw string bags. I had simple things like ring pops, candy necklaces, stickers etc. in the bag. Cost of the filled favor bags was less than $10 for 8 girls. We took lots of pictures. The girls left at this point and later I sent a simple thank you card with a pansie print on it. Lots of fun.