Down the Rabbit Hole (Part 2)

“Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down…. Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?”

Ah, but it did, and she found herself in Wonderland! If you missed Part 1, the post is here. Now onto part 2 of throwing a Mad Hatter Tea Party.

In addition to all of the wonderful things you can find at thrift and dollar stores, clipart is one of the best decor items. Print it out at home or have it done at a photocopy place. Either way, it's cheap and easy. Here are some fun things we did with it...

Print out a photo of the doorknob, cut out the middle and paste it over both sides of your front door.

Add a couple of characters by cutting them in half to "hide" behind a tree. For the wooden arrow signs, I purchased a piece of foam from the Dollar Tree, that looked like wood, cut it into three parts and wrote on them in black sharpie.

And finally, my rose topiary project. You need clipart, cards, scissors and tape. If you can find the characters all put together online or in a book, even better. I didn't find anything, so I had to make my own.

But it turned out super cute. One of my faves.

In addition to the fun doorknob, at the entrace to your party, you can create a rabbit hole for guests to go through before seeing the rest of the decor. I thought this would be a fun way to transition into Wonderland. We ended up using our umbrella from our outdoor patio set, and hung black curtains around it with streamers at the end. If you're doing this for older kids, it might be fun to cut out white Cheshire cat grins and eyes in various sizes, and tape them to the inside of the tunnel. Then get a black light situated in there to create a fun effect. I didn't do it this time around, since I didn't want to scare anyone, but maybe next time. A child-sized tunnel would also work, but I don't own one and didn't want the "Princesses" to have to crawl in their best dresses.

For food, I made shortbread cookies (since they're not too sweet, just buttery) in the shape of flowers, then used pink frosting to pipe "Eat Me" on all of them. These went really well with our "tea" of hot apple cider. They also work wonderfully with real tea, if you decide to use that.

For the cake, I decided to do individual cupcakes in the shape of hearts. Reynolds makes mini foil hearts that they advertise for Jello Jigglers, but they're perfect for cupcakes (I found them at the dollar store). These were topped with pink frosting and piped with "Eat Me". You can also add "Drink Me" tags to all of the teacups for a little added something.

For the tea party set-up, I used three child sized tables to create one long banquet style table and child sized chairs. None of them matched, which was even better. Then I hung various paper lanterns from the ceiling using tacks and string. You can find lanterns easily during the summer months at the dollar store, but I was also able to find them at Target and they're roughly only $1 each. I used doilies as placemats on the table (another dollar store item) and it was a nice touch. Then I had three teapots that I bought at the thrift store and used two of them as flower vases and the third to put a stuffed dormouse in.

The party went over really well and I'll post pictures of it next week. Here are a couple of great resources, if you'd like more ideas on throwing a tea party yourself. I checked out several books from my local library, but found these to be the most helpful: Taking Tea with Alice : looking-glass tea parties and fanciful Victorian teas by Dawn Hylton Gottlieb and Walt Disney's Alice's Tea Party by Lyn Calder. And if you don't already own them, make sure you check out the Walt Disney movie and the soundtrack to the movie to use during the party. And lastly, this is a MUST website for ideas and clipart: Lenny's Alice in Wonderland Site.

See you next week! :o)