{Tea Party}

This weekend we celebrated Miss O's birthday with a tea party!  We had some lovely friends and family come to our home to play, decorate sugar cookies (yum!) and watch O open her birthday gifts.  There were 5 precious little girls dressed up in tutu's and one very handsome little boy in a tie that came to make Miss O's birthday bash one to remember!

The table was set with a random assortment of tea cups I found at Goodwill, plus a few special tea cups my grandma, Nanny as I call her, had collected over her 90 years.  The tea set in the middle was my mom's when she was a little girl.  It was in remarkably good shape, aside from one saucer that my mom broke many, many years ago, that Nanny glued back together.

The candy buffet was so much fun to put together and included:  candy canes, jelly bellies, chocolate nonpareils, cotton candy, gummy alphabet letters, rock candy, and pop rocks!  Each party guest got to take home a bag of their choice of candy from the buffet.  By the end of the party, I know my mommy friends were thrilled to get to take home just a little more sugar for their little one!

The best part was watching all the little girls decorate their sugar cookies.  The tea cups on the table were filled with different colored sprinkles and we used squeeze bottles filled with royal icing to squeeze the icing onto the cookies.  The kids did a GREAT job with this!  And, of course, after each cookie was decorated, it was immediately eaten!  

The cake turned out better than I could have imagined!  I emailed a picture of what I wanted to Patty Cakes in Highland and this is what she came up with.  So cute!  A special thanks to my sister for transporting this work of art all the way from Highland to Lee's Summit!  And, for the record, this cake tasted as good as it looked!  Miss O wanted red cake, so inside all this yummy blue icing is a delicious red velvet cake.  I was somewhat surprised, but even after eating all those cookies and icing, everyone still wanted a piece of cake (thank goodness)!

I have always been a big fan of birthdays.  My mom always knew how to do birthdays up right!  I hope I can carry on this tradition with my own kids, making each birthday special, celebrating their lives, and just making a big deal out of the day they were born.  After all, my children are my greatest gift - why not let them know that?