So my lovely little daughter’s 5th Birthday party was planned for the middle of March 2020. Two days before the party we postponed it because of that pesky virus…well, the days turned into weeks, which turned into months, and this little darling’s party sat in a bin, gathering dust in the basement. When her birthday came around again, we were saddened that she never ever got her 5th birthday party. So when she turned six, we got out the bin, made sure she still liked and wanted the theme (A Princess Tea Party). After some discussion she decided that no, this year she would like a Beauty and the Beast party. Uh-oh. So we compromised on a Beauty and the Beast Tea Party.

Still sadly, but SO MUCH better than 2020, we could only have 10 people in the house. We drastically reduced our guest list to include just one family and my Mum, and sent a “Party in a Bag” to my niece and nephew through my Mum. We had a lovely time, and made the best of it.

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Invitations:

I used to always use Punchbowl.com for my party invitations, but they have started to charge for all invitations, so I switched to making my invitations on my PicMonkey account. Here it is:

Design and layout is not my strong suit, but I was happy with how this turned out.

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Loot Bags:

I never (NEVER) do loot bags. Instead I try to make crafts to send home, or games with prizes, so the kids never go home empty handed. In this party the exception proves the rule. I saw something similar to these bags on on Pinterest (but I can’t find it now to link to it – rookie mistake. Sorry!), and since there were so few kids I decided to make them…plus I got my first colour printer for Christmas and hadn’t gotten enough of a chance to craft with it!

The bags and roses were from Dollar Tree (the roses were $1.25 for a bunch of 5 roses). I designed the label on PicMonkey, printed it on my wicked awesome new printer, and glued them on the front of the bag. I folded over the top of the bag, used a hole-punch to put two holes in the top of the bag to thread the ribbon through, tied on the rose and sealed the bag in one fell swoop, then I used the edge of my scissors to curl it.

In the loot bags I put:

• juice box
• several Pixy Stix
• glow sticks
• coloured pen
• Fruit by the Foot x2
• maybe a Bear Paw…that was a long time ago, though, and I forgot to take a picture🤷‍♂️

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Prepare the Craft Supplies:

We did two crafts. One was Decorate Your Own Fascinator and Top Hat. This idea is Bobbie’s at The Clumsy Crafter. She has all the details on how to make the fascinator part of this craft. I’ll tell you more about how ours turned out next week. I added Top Hats because there were going to be two boys in attendance at the party. I made my top hats ahead of time out of foam board and bristol board. You can read that post here. Or you can watch me make one on YouTube by clicking here.

The other craft I had planned, Nail Polish Marbled Mugs, was from Burlap and Blue. I found lots of sets of two plain white, sturdy cups and saucers from Dollarama, and my stash of nail polish to make this craft. I also made a set ahead of time to make sure I knew how to make it.

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Decorations:

Beauty and the Beast Decorations:

I put little accents around the place for Beauty and the Beast. My daughter insisted on the pink teapot, even though it doesn’t look like Mrs. Pots. You can’t really tell, but there’s an old-fashioned hand-held mirror on the top of the books.

Shockingly, I didn’t get a proper picture of the chandelier, but you can see it in the background of the next picture. My sister and I made it a couple of years ago for her daughter’s Beauty and the Beast Party, and we kept it because it was that awesome. I also got some Dollar Tree balloons in matching colours (on the right under the banner) because what kid doesn’t love helium balloons?

Tea Party Decorations:

This banner (pictured above) is one of the decorations I made a year ago. At the time my daughter was turning 5, so to make it useable for this year, I just took out a bit of the gold paper with my utility knife to turn the 5 into a 6.

I wanted lots of finery! The plastic champagne glasses and gold paper cups are both from Dollar Tree. My sister (pictured above) made the cake pops, as per the birthday girl’s request.

The hanging paper decorations are from Dollar Tree. The lantern thing is from Dollarama, and was originally used for our Mermaid Party. I really like decorations that fold down and are easy to store. I like to save money, but to make things look nice. If I can reuse things it helps to justify the expense, even if a decoration is only $1.25 – it can really add up!

Also, notice the Lumiere like candlestick on the left side of the picture above. We bought that at a thrift shop for our Disney Princess Party. It looked pretty rough, and I think it was silver, so I spray painted it gold, and it looks AMAZING!

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Tea Party Table Setting:

My goal was to make the tables look very fancy (like British afternoon tea) and grown up, while having little clean up, and no hearts broken if something broke… like a vintage, heirloom teacup😬.

Here’s the old fashioned tea party table set-up:

• I got fancy paper plates (gold and flowery/butterfly-y) and paper doilies from the Dollar Tree
• teapot serviettes from Winners
• the little paper butterflies I made with my Cricut. I just found a butterfly image to upload to Cricut Design Space, sliced an oval into it, and glued two back to back. I originally saw this idea at a church Women’s Christmas Tea.
• fancy table cloth (which I can bleach if needs must)
• candy bracelets, because jewelry is jewelry
• artificial flowers (also from Dollar Tree, originally used in our DIY Easter Bonnets) in a fancy cut glass vase

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Tea Party Food:

Mulberry biscuits with fresh strawberries and clotted cream. Yum, yum! I made the biscuits with frozen mulberries from the mulberry tree in our backyard. I sliced the strawberries the night before and added a bit of sugar so they’d be a bit syrupy on the clotted cream. The recipe for the clotted cream is from author, Dawn Kinge. It is such an easy and delicious recipe, I highly recommend trying it out.

Tea Party Drinks:

Tea, silly!

There are lots of tea options out there, I know. A friend of mind used juice infused tea bags at her daughter’s birthday tea party because it’s sweeter and little kids seem to like it better. We’re a family of major tea drinkers, so I just made your classic orange pekoe. We also had sugar cubes, which are a bit of a novelty these days, and each child was allowed to have two. Most put one in their tea and ate the other one plain😏.

We also had sprite, which before the party, I poured into wine bottles to look like champagne. The kids absolutely loved that they looked like they were drinking wine. They would say things like, “If anyone looks in the window right now they’d think there are a bunch of kids drinking wine😂!”

I put sliced strawberries in the glasses, because strawberries float and look positively divine, darling:

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That’s it for the party preparations. We celebrated this party at my sister’s house, so I had bins and bins of stuff to bring. It was actually pretty ridiculous when I was looking at it piled in my dining room waiting to go. But it really felt so good to be hosting a party again. I love doing it so much, and feel so invigorated by it! Plus, my daughter and my niece (who is SO MUCH like me) were excited to help me set it all up, so I knew I wouldn’t have to do all that work alone!

I hope you’re enjoying this party as much as I am! Next week I’ll tell you how we ran the party, and how it all turned out. It really was very lovely, and enjoyed by kids and adults alike!