A Mother Son tea party

One of Mr. W's co-workers has a son that was in Deuce's class at the old school and we became fast friends. I'm always posting photos of my tea travels and she mentioned at the company summer picnic that she would love to join me sometime and that her son might like it too. Of course I loved that idea! It took a while for us to get all coordinated and scheduled (she's getting another degree right now on top of working) but we finally had our tea.

The boys were so sweet and did a nice job or trying new foods and using their table manners. Their attention span waned pretty quickly though so she and I did our best to make it through the courses quickly.

Scones with lemon curd AND jam.

We had such a nice time. I need to plan of these types of mother son outings.

An Introduction into Poetry Teas

I wouldn't say that I am overwhelmed by homeschooling, but I am certainly researching homeschooling tips and tricks anytime I get a chance. Sometimes that might take me down a rabbit hole. One such hole was the concept of Poetry Teatime. My curiosity was piqued; this takes something very near and dear to my heart, tea time, with something I cannot stand, poetry. I have never been able to understand poetry, my brain just doesn't work that way. So much so that the few books of poetry we have been gifted have sat on bookshelves unread by me to the children. (And I am sometimes guilty of donating them to charity.) Now this homeschooling tangent had brought me to a website essentially challenging me to not pass my bias along to the children. And it could be fun for all my children, both homeschooled and traditionally schooled because tea time snacks has always been a part of our after school lives. If nothing else it would give me a chance to set a pretty table.

I began by perusing bookshelves in everyone's rooms looking for any book that might technically contain poetry, or at the very least have a nice cadence. Once this pile of books was assembled it sat on a spare chair in the dining room awaiting me to get it together to actually host the tea time, after school activity schedules are hard. Finally yesterday I found that perfect combination of free time and beautiful weather so I decided that our inaugural Poetry Tea could be held outside. In recent years I've gotten sucked into Emma Bridgewater pottery and I just splurged on a big teapot during a sale so I decided to set the tea table with them. A little bit of fruit, a box of Ikea alphabet cookies, and apple cider were enough to satisfy the children into sitting for me to read aloud.

I was pleased that all of them read a couple poems as well. We talked about authors they might know of who write poetry and eventually they landed on Shel Silverstein. Both the boys have one of his books and I encouraged them to bring those to our next tea.

This is the collection of books that we read:
All For Love by Tasha Tudor
Hi, Koo! by Jon J. Muth
The Springs Of Joy by Tasha Tudor
The Real Mother Goose

Sapphire & Silver Tea

A few years ago while I was reading an issue of Victoria magazine I was inspired to throw a sapphire tea for my mother's birthday. I can't even remember now what the article was about specifically, blue and white dishes? Gem stones? Blue crystal? whatever it was I decided that it would be perfect to throw her a sapphire themed tea for her 65th birthday. I even ordered more cobalt blue biot crystal to fill out the set we received as a wedding gift. But then somehow she and I never scheduled it. I brought up the idea again this summer and convinced her to do it the afternoon before she and some of her girl friends would leave on a girls' trip because her best friend, who lives in Canada, would be in town.

I set the table with a white, chrysanthemum patterned linen table cloth, Moonlight Rose china, silver, and the blue Crystal.

I had purchased a set of 6 silver glittered taper candles at some point and fortunately was able to find them where I had stashed them in time to use them in my heirloom glass candlesticks.

The white and blue flowers I bought at the grocery store and arranged myself.


Now that I am homeschool and this is technically a school day I decided to use as much ready made treats as possible.

Sapphire & Silver Tea Menu

Murchie’s Ms. Grey black tea

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Curried chicken salad on Blues Bread

Tillamook cheddar and garden tomato on white bread

Cucumber cups with dill cream and smoked salmon

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Crumpets with strawberry jam or salal and blueberry preserve

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Blueberry & oatmeal bars

Assorted La Provence macarons

Assorted JaCiva chocolate truffles

Fresh blackberries, blueberries & mangoes

I also made a signature cocktail, I wanted something blue AND with Sapphire gin, and settled on the Sapphire Alpine. I made a huge pitcher full and it was way too much. The Boomers did not drink nearly enough of that as I had hoped! I served it in martini glasses in the drawing room while I was assembling the tea sandwiches.


This tea was a lot of fun to put together and my mother, her friends, and her sister really enjoyed it which made it all worth while. I was so tired afterward though being on my feet for several hours serving and pouring out hot tea. I went to be early last night!

Bowling birthday

My oldest is turning twelve! My self imposed rule is that kid parties should be at home until they turn 10. We did it up big with his 10th birthday at the local amusement park and I did a In The Goode Olde Summertime theme with ice cream sundaes. Last year I took a step back and let Mr. W plan it with him; I assumed it would be paintball or arcade games or something. Instead my little sweet heart picked a bunny theme and wanted to have it at home and play with his bunnies as an activity. So cute! The two of them did all the treats and games themselves, I just made the cake.

This year was almost as easy for me; he picked a bowling alley so all I had to do was reserve the lanes and send out an evite. Crazy! Turns out I ought to have reserved a couple months in advance though because all the cosmic bowling times were booked up already. This party was so easy for me that I didn't do anything for it day of; I took my Daisy troop on a picnic in a park and showed up at the party at the same time as the guests! Mr. W and T-Bone went to St. Cupcake and picked out cupcakes and I rooted through my drawer of used/saved birthday candles. Everything else was included, even a bowling pin that everyone could sign as a souvenir.

Teddy Bear Picnic

One of the children asked if we could have another Teddy Bear Picnic and I was happy to oblige with that. They are getting to the point where they won't be interested in this sort of thing much longer so I definitely want to indulge any stuffed animal requests. Naturally it took me a few days to actually do it after I bought teddy grahams at the store, but they kept reminding me. :) We kept it pretty simple with bear shaped honey toast and teddy grahams. I ought to have added some fresh fruit since bears like berries.

We set up our picnic in front of our Marian Garden which is filling out so nicely, but needs to be weeded desperately.

I gathered up as many bear themed books as I could to read aloud. We had Corduroy by Don Freeman, Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson, The Three Bears illustrated by Frances Brundage, Bears by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak, The Bear Who Shared by Catherine Rayner, and a bit from Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne.

"My House is Full of Sevens" 7th Birthday Party

We are big fans of  They Might Be Giants in this household. Our love began with Here Come the ABCs and grew with the 123s and the Science. The Seven song was such a big hit in our house that Jr. decided a couple of years ago that he wanted it to be the theme of his 7th birthday party. #7 shaped puppets? It sounded perfect to me and I was happy to make it happen (as well as a little surprised that he never changed his mind to Star Wars or Angry Birds as a party theme instead.)

Obviously this isn't a theme that has lots of ready made party supplies already out there so I had to get crafty. I used the AR Delaney font to get the perfect round 80s look bubble 7. Then I blew it up several times on the copier to get the sizes I would need for the invitations, puppets, and goody bags. I bought a ream of neon colored card stock and went to town cutting out 7s. I used blank, blue note cards from Target for the invitations. I used medium size 7s with small googly eyes. All invitation wording was printed on copy paper and pasted to the other side of the card.


I used the largest 7s for the puppets. My original plan was to have the children make the entire puppets during the party, but it has worked so well having the rocket ships pre-assembled for Deuce's party that I decided to glue on the large googly eyes on in advance. I thought a herd of 7s would look supper cute so I taped two pieces of of styrofoam to a piece of cardboard and wrapped them with paper to make a display board. (How convenient that we had a bag of styrofoam in the basement waiting to be recycled!) Here they are at the craft table. We also had the portable DVD player set up so the children could watch the music video for inspiration.



The smallest size 7 was used on the goody bags. I was tired of buying googly eyes at this point so I dumped out the hole punch and glued on white paper eyes and used a sharpie for the pupils. Simple. I debated whether or not to have the 7s 'talk' on the bag; in the end I decided they should talk, and they said, 'Thank you for filling up my house."


In the song the 7s repeatedly shout, "We want cake! Where's our cake?" and they devour a cake in the video. Naturally I had to decorate this birthday cake just like the music video. I had bought a box of red and blue velvet cake mix around 4th of July and used cream cheese frosting. I added a blue food coloring to it to make the piping around the top and bottom. I used a store bought gel icing for the swags and it ran . Boo! Otherwise I think it turned out cute.

#7 puppet photobomb


Shock and awe that the candle wouldn't stay lit.


In keeping with the 7 theme we had 7 layer dip and a 7 fruit salad.


And then we served 7-up in little cans to the children and 7&7 to the adults. Because what children's party would be complete without a bar? Good thing I have some vintage bottle crates for all my glass bottle display needs.



I couldn't think of any 7 theme activities so we rented a bounce house in which the boys could jump. The rental was for 4 hours, after the party was over we made our boys jump in it until it was time to bring it down. We wanted to get all our money's worth out of it! It was so much fun to jump in! It was huge though, I don't know whether we'll have space for one in the future if we do all the landscaping we have planned for the yard.

 

Little Miss decorating her 7 puppet.

 The important thing is that the birthday boy had a great time and enjoyed playing with his friends!

A look back at a Baseball birthday party.

I'm starting to think ahead to planning Little Miss's first birthday party. I did a baseball theme for both of the boys. I like the theme so much I did it for Our Little Helper's 2nd birthday too, but that was before I started the blog. I decided to add them now. (Baby Boy's birthday is here.)

For his first birthday I just made white cupcakes decorated like baseballs, super easy. The second time around I decided to challenge myself by making another cake decorated like a catcher's mitt. It was chocolate cake with a chocolate frosting. I think I used a frosting recipe from the Tasha Tudor cookbook. I did a few sketches on paper to come up with the pattern for the 'stitching.' I used a tube of black store bought icing.

 And I used my Baseball plated from Fishes Eddy.

 I reused the birthday banner and left over baseball party hats, plates, napkins, and filled in with plain ones.

 I also bought a bunch of pinwheels in red and blue. I used these to line the walkway as well as used some for party favors. They looked so cute spinning in the breeze.

 A bucket of colored sunflowers by the front door.

 We did this as a very low key barbeque, and from the looks of this table I suspect that some of our family must have brought side dishes to share.  I don't think I was expecting that, but who are we to turn away food?

Count down to the birthday party

After Thanksgiving most people are prematurely celebrating Christmas. But in this house we are all about the count down to the Rocket ship birthday party. This party theme is based entirely on the plates I bought a couple years ago at Target. Outer space decorations abound so it has been pretty simple to collect things we need over the last year. (Yes, I picked his 3rd birthday theme before I had his Sesame Street birthday last year.)

Michael's sells unfinished birdhouses shaped like rocket ships so I planed long ago to incorporate them into the centerpieces. In all my sleuthing online it seems like everyone else uses these little wooden rockets too. I've primed these and am beginning to paint them similarly to those on the plates.
 
My preliminary plan for invitations was stylized rocket ship stickers on stationery, basically what I always seem to do. But Our Little Helper is so artistic and loves to draw. He presented me with a drawing of a rocket ship in outer space which included an astronaut tethered to the ship. And he composed the drawing so wonderfully with a border with Saturn, Jupiter, Earth, and the moon. I fell in love with it and thought it would be the perfect artwork for the party invitations. Mr. W added the lettering.
 
With a December birthday we have to hold the party indoors so I try to make up for that with the decorations. I ordered paper lanterns in varying sizes here and we are going to add some paint and tissue paper to create some texture to make them look more planet-y.  I think my MIL sent this set of poster paints when Our Little Helper was 3 and I never really let him use it.  So today was a big event since they got to use ALL the paints!

 This one will be Saturn.

 This largest lantern will be Pluto.

 

So much paint!!