30th UnBirthday Mad Hatter Tea Party

 It's Friday!  I love Fridays!  (Who doesn't??) Do you know what I was doing last Friday?  Throwing a suprise party for a friend's 30th birthday - that's what!  A Mad Hatter 30th Unbirthday Tea Party.  That's what the birthday girl wanted - she mentioned it to me a year ago (on her 29th birthday) that it would be fun to have a Mad Hatter Tea Party for her 30th.  I'm kind of proud of myself for remembering LOL.  For a few years now I've thought the whole Alice in Wonderland theme is full of cute and fun ideas and I've tried more than once to convince my daughter that it would be a fun birthday party for her.  I even had some ideas Pinned already.  

 And let's face it - what better way to spend an afternoon than having a tea party with these crazy ladies?
So my friend and I started plotting and had the birthday girl set aside some time for a "craft day."  First on the list - hats!  About a week before the party my friend and I got together to make fun little Mad Hatter type hats for everyone.

 The guests got black and white with some sort of variation on the heart (Queen of Hearts) theme for the ribbon.

And the birthday got one a little bigger and brighter.  We used this tutorial for the hats and it worked like a charm.  We used plastic cups and the fabric still attached to it with the hot glue just fine.  We didn't use the cup lids for the tops of the hats - we just traced around the lip of the cup and cut a piece out of an old cereal box.  Then we attached it all to alligator clips so they would stay in our hair.  If I were to do it again I probably would have gone with headbands.  I think the hats would have stayed in place on our heads better with those.

This little guy was the only kiddo not old enough to be in school while we were working on everything.  He wasn't a fan and made it very hard for his mommy to do much.  Luckily he was in a much better mood on the day of the party and the entire time we were setting up he had that cute smile plastered on his face while he happily played in the playpen (phew!).

 On to the party details!  I'm so pleased with how everything turned out.  It came together very easily and with very little expense as I tried to use what I already had or make most things ourselves.  The only things I bought specifically for the party (other than food, of course) were the mismatched tea cups and saucers and the little tea pot from the thrift store.  To get the biggest effect for our efforts we kept the decorations confined to the dining table and the food display.

The clock came directly off my kitchen wall ;)  I already had it taken down and the hands off all ready to pack up and it made the perfect base for the centerpiece.  Add in a few colorful flowers, the misdirection sign posts and mismatched tableware and the bright eclectic look was pretty easy to pull off.

 Each table setting was different from the rest.

And aren't the key adorable?!  I ran across them at JoAnn's a couple years ago in the dollar section with the intention of framing them somehow but haven't done it yet.

 Can't forget the Cheshire cat!  He hung out above the pantry.  We also thought about doing a playing card garland hanging from the chandelier, but we ran out of time.  We had also planned to have the Very Merry Unbirthday song playing in the background when the birthday girl arrived, but we forgot to download it and our hurried attempt to YouTube it and play it on the cell phone wasn't quite as effective.  Oh well.  ;)

 On to the food!  All tea parties need lots of food in teeny tiny portions, right?  We grabbed random tea cups and mugs to use for the food display.  The giant tea cups are actually flower pots that I use for decoration once in a while.  And the Happy Birthday plate was one I made years ago on one of our Saturdays with The Girls at a paint your own place.
The menu included: southwestern egg rolls, pigs in a blanket, buffalo winge, fruit skewers, individual 7-layer dips and chips, miniture chocolate cupcakes and tiny caramel tarts.  The teapot was filled with cold sweet tea and we also had pumpkin hot chocolate to drink.

Total success!  Our friend was very suprised (yes!  it's hard to keep a secret like that!) and we had so much fun no one wanted to go home.  We ended up crafting after all, just to prolong the our time together.