Alice in Wonderland Party: Games

We put a little tea set in the sand pit so that the toddlers could host their own Mad Hatter's tea party.



The Cheshire Cat I painted was used for a "pin the smile on the Cheshire Cat" game.





Alice plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts using flamingos. Ideally, I'd have liked to have bought proper croquet mallets and painted them to look like flamingos. However, I couldn't justify the cost (our garden isn't very croquet friendly being hilly and slightly downwards sloping so a croquet set would not get a lot of use). So we made our own using some scrap wood and thick wooden dowelling (total cost: about £3).



These are the party bags we sent the kids home with. The girls each got a little Cheshire Cat purse, but the boys ended up with Doctor Who and Spiderman items as it was difficult to find Alice in Wonderland themed stuff to suit them! There were also prizes for the games such as an Alice in Wonderland Audio and book set (only cost me £2!). The party bag fillers all came from a site called Mummy Martin's Toy Box.

Alice in Wonderland Party: Food

Here are a few snaps of the food from our party:




This is my first ever attempt at a topsy turvy cake (also known as a Mad Hatter cake - very appropriate for the theme of the party!).

This type of cake is not for the faint hearted as it is quite complicated. I had no idea where to start so read the tutorial on Cake Central. Being a bit of a cake baking novice, I then decided it was too complicated so I simplified my own version and was still pretty pleased with the result.





We served traditional tea party type food - cakes, biscuits and little sandwiches.



If I was better at icing, I probably would have done something clever and iced "eat me" onto the cakes. But I did this in the most simplified way I could think of, and just made cute little signs with a toothpick.



This was the kids' drinks. I collected and cleaned empty juice bottles, covered them in pretty bright paper and added a "drink me" label.


I'm hoping to do a blog post on the party games next week.

Alice in Wonderland Party: Decorations

After a turbulent couple of months and the distraction of the school summer holidays, I am finally ready to start uploading the Alice in Wonderland photos. Today's topic: the decorations.




The Cheshire Cat. Drawn onto wooden board, cut out and then painted with acrylic. The windmill flowers were 99p Shop finds.





We had two playing card soldiers and half a dozen blow up flamingoes.




Inside was decorated with paper lanterns.

You can see the table here, scattered with mini playing cards. There are two teapots on the table with (fake) white roses, which the Card Gardeners have painted red!





The white fabric roses were bought in a Pound Shop. I painted them with red water based paint.



This is the sideboard. We covered it with playing card confetti (from a party supply store), a playing card tower, a bottle labeled "drink me" and a mysterious key.







Playing card towers were placed at strategic points around our house. To keep them standing in the presence of excitable children, the cards are held together with discrete cardboard tabs.



And finally, we blew up fifty red and black helium balloons. I used a heart shaped hole punch on the playing cards then threaded them to the curling ribbon.

Posts on the party games and food to come at a later date!