A very merry unbirthday!

When Natalie said she wanted to do a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party for her birthday, I thought, “That sounds like fun. Not too hard. We can do that.” Hmmm. Well, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it turned out to be so cute.

It pays to have an art teacher for a dad. He told me a while back that he had make a bunch of Alice in Wonderland decorations for a ward party, and that they were just sitting around. I decided to take advantage of his creativity and borrow all those decorations. Wow! There were so many, I could hardly find enough available wall space.

(GRRRR–I had this whole post almost done and when I went to save it, something went wrong, and now I’m back to this point. Well, I guess you get the shorter version, then.)

When the ladies arrived for the tea party, Natalie escorted them outside to play croquet. It seems the rules of croquet were cramping their style, however, so they just ended up whacking the balls all at the same time, running willy-nilly after balls.

You may notice that John seems to have bunny ears on. He made a night before costume decision that he wanted to be the white rabbit, and Larissa actually made those ears for him from tissue paper and a headband. It’s nice that Natalie didn’t shun her siblings and let them enjoy the party. John’s friend showed up right before it started, and I told him in order to participate, he would have to have a crazy hat, too. So, they went down to the costumes and found a wizard hat for him to wear.

Inside, the preparations were continuing. We had lots of cookies and small sandwiches. We wouldn’t want our guests to leave hungry, would we?

After the girls played croquet for all of 15-20 minutes (I had planned for that activity to last at least 45 minutes. Silly me), the girls came in and opened presents. While they were opening the presents, the Queen and the Mad Hatter arrived to officially welcome them to the party.

Oh, and the white rabbit was there, as well.

Now before you get all impressed thinking that I rented or bought these costumes, let me tell you the back story. On my way home from bells on Wed night, I mentioned to my carpool that I had this Mad Hatter’s tea party to do on Saturday and I needed to put up all these Alice in Wonderland decorations. My friend Janeen said, “You know I have the that Red Queen costume, right? You could borrow that.” WHAT? Why didn’t I THINK of that? She mentioned that she also had access to a Mad Hatter and an Alice costume, if I wanted to borrow them, too. No WAY! When we discussed some bell music that I could use, that clinched the deal, and I made a trip to Spanish Fork the next night to pick up all these things. Sadly, we don’t have a full shot of my in the costume, because with the skirt and the hoop skirt and all it’s pretty amazing. Don’t you agree? So, thank goodness for talented and generous friends!

Anyway, enough about me and how lovely I look in my fabulous costume….

Let’s talk about our birthday girl! Natalie looked pretty dolled up, too.

I thought it was fun how her friends came dressed up, as well. If they didn’t dress up in a skirt or dress, they at least hat on some kind of hat, which is the point of a Mad Hatter’s tea party, right?

After they had eaten their fill, the ladies retired to the family room to play Natalie’s favorite party game, Truth or Dare with the fuzzy Toss it to me game cube. And the party ended with a showing of Mirror, mirror.

I think it was a huge success. Of course, here it is, two days later and I haven’t returned the tea cups or put away the many tea pots.
Maybe I’ll have the servants do that, since I am the Queen after all.
Right.