Miss Lady's Second Annual Tea Party!

It’s tea party time! Last year, Miss Lady had asked me if she could have a real tea party. In other words, something other than water and animal crackers. She wanted to invite “my girls,” which includes her female cousins, aunts, grandmothers and a few of my close friends. It was a fun experience for the two of us, and I tried to make it fun for everyone…I think I succeeded, the little girls seemed to have a wonderful time for sure!

Last year, we held our party in our yard at the old house. There was no shade anywhere in the yard, and it was a bit hot and definitely humid, plus we had the threat of rain clouds looming in the distance (we never did get any rain). But this year, we have the Secret Garden! There is a big silver maple in the garden that is the perfect spot to have a comfortable summer tea party

We were able to hold the party beneath the shade of this tree.

I had hopes of getting the creek dug out, maybe having at least a few more plants in the ground, and having a small foot bridge over the creek before the party. That did NOT happen. I ended up being about three weeks behind on everything I wanted to do this summer…it seems I had forgotten how time consuming a new baby is! A single nursing session, preceded by a diaper change, followed by another diaper change, burping and mommy getting a bathroom break easily takes up an hour. Do that multiple times a day, add four monster, I mean children, to the mix and you end up behind on everything and having a VERY messy house!

Thankfully, the house is nearly back in check. My wonderful sister-in-law and Scott helped out a ton with the kids the other day, which allowed me to get caught up on a lot of things. I still have not gotten a schedule put into play, or gotten schoolwork organized for the kids, but I have hopes of doing that before the week is over. The garden side of the chicken coop is nearly finished being cleaned and organized. Now I just need to regain some enthusiasm for the project so I can finish it!

But back to the party. It went so well, and it was such a gorgeous day for it! It was hot and sunny, but under the shade of the tree, with the breeze blowing, it was wonderful. We had twelve lovely ladies join us, and Miss Lady’s two younger brothers for a total of 16 people, though the baby hardly counts since the only thing he ate was milk and his grandmother held him the whole time.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures until the very end of the party, after we had begun clean-up, and the food was nearly gone 🙁 That was sad, because everything and everyone looked so beautiful!

I did manage to get a picture of one of the tables before we cleaned everything off! We used mismatching dish and napkins, thrift store-find linens and decor… Recently we were given some tea pots Scott’s grandfather had collected, and we were able to use those this year, which was a nice touch.

I thought I took a picture of the little picnic area, but that seems to be one of the shots that is missing from my camera 🙁 My mother is a quilting maniac, so recently when she announced that she needed to thin the herd a bit, I was thrilled to find one of my favorite quilts in the stack! (You can see a little bit of it in the picture below.) It added the perfect touch to our little picnic area for the little girls. Thank you, Mom! We filled the picnic basket with little party favors of Lemon Buddies wrapped in a vintage-print scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby. (You can get the paper here on Amazon.)

We had quite a spread of food, and thanks to all of the lovely ladies who came, I didn’t really need to make much at all…which with a new baby on my hand, was quite a relief! One of the lovely ladies even made flower fruit-kabobs! Such a cute idea, and the little girls LOVED them. They had fun picking out their flowers!