Take Me to Wonderland

Alice anxiously awaiting her guests.
~

This was our second time to Wonderland, so fortunately, I was able to re-use some items, but I added even more this time! If you missed the first go around, you can find those posts here. Also, for the Hat invitation tutorial see this post.  For Ryah's party, we had a photo area, played croquet, painted teacup planters and had new food items! In addition to the party photos, I thought I would post a quick tutorial on the teapot strawberries I did.

I've never worked with dipping chocolate before, so they didn't turn out as pretty as I would have liked, but I know what I would do differently next time.

1. You'll need strawberries, pretzels, white melting chocolate and decorator frosting if you want to add the top of the teapot lid.
2. Cut off the bottom and top of the strawberry. Discard the top and place the bottom on the top for the lid.
3. Carefully break your pretzels so you have a handle and a spout.
4. Do all of your teapots before dipping (learned this the hard way).
5. Melt your chocolate and dip away. I used a flat ladle to scoop up the strawberry from the bottom, and a spoon to gently place it on wax paper to harden. Try to get all of the dipping done before reheating the chocolate. The more you have to reheat, the more lumpy it will get because the chocolate is getting cooked.
6. When it's hardened, add a little dot of frosting to the top of the "lid."
7. I don't recommend doing these too far in advance or your pretzels will get soggy. Morning of is probably best, though you might get away with the night before.

Now let's party!!

By the way, you can't tell, but I glued googly eyes onto the flowers in the vases on the table. So simple. I found everything at the Dollar Tree.

I did make the chocolate hats. These were MUCH easier than the strawberries. You'll need marshmallows, melting chocolate, sticks and Keebler fudge stripe cookies. Shove sticks into marshmallows, then dip the marshmallows in melted chocolate. Keep upside down for a few seconds to drip off excess chocolate, then slide cookie onto the bottom. Place upside down on wax paper to harden. You may need to prop the stick with something to keep it from falling over. Then pipe frosting around the hat as a sash.

The kids played croquet, took photos with Alice (I'll use these as thank you cards), painted teacup planters (flowers were added after they dried), pinned the grin on the Cheshire Cat, had rabbit races and played hot flamingo.

My chandelier was by far my favorite decor item. I almost didn't want to take it down. I made paper top hats to slide over my existing shades (the light looks really cool shining through them), my friend Mandi made the umbrella the dormouse is hanging under, and I made bread butterflies using part of a template I found here. I found a pack of Alice in Wonderland playing cards and each card has a different scene from the book as well as a quote. I scattered them on the table and made a cute garland with the rest.

I wanted the goodie bags to tie into the theme, so in each teabag, the kids received a yo-yo, pencil, white rabbit windup, large rainbow lollipop, rabbit jumper (we used these in the rabbit races), porcupine flamingo and Mad Hatter Riddle Book. I couldn't find any riddle books, so I made those as well.

The kids had a blast and the parents appreciated all of the details. And "Alice" wore the most beautiful smile. A lot of work, but so worth it.
Here is a link to all of the photos so you can see more details on the set up (I realize some of the photos above aren't very big).