Garden Tea Party
Little girls love tea parties. Double the fun by combining the themes of gardening and tea. If the weather is fine, host it in the garden; if not, an indoor picnic is just as special.
7 Great Ways to Decorate
- Use plastic wineglasses for juice; second-hand tea cups and saucers for milk.
- Dress a table with white linens (they can be cleaned, after all!) and plastic dollar-store doilies. Alternately, use a white paper tablecloth and scatter some real flower petals over top.
- Pick pastel colors for balloons, streamers and plastic tableware.
- For inside parties, fill bud vases with real blooms and place throughout party room.
- Fill big terracotta planters with ice to cool cans of pop or drinking boxes.
- Serve "hors d'oeuvres" (finger food, little sandwiches, snacks, etc.) on trays.
- Dress Dad as the butler and Mom as the maid to properly "serve" the ladies.
Fun For All
- Have a stash of second-hand-store "Ladies Who Lunch"-wear on hand to make costuming part of the party.
- Help girls decorate inexpensive straw hats with faux flowers and scrap ribbons. Take a group picture of the girls in their finery to send with the thank-you card; send party hats home as favors.
- Cut out petals from construction paper prior to the party. At the party, let girls add sparkles and tape petals to giant cellophane-wrapped lollipops. Arrange flower-lollipops as a centerpiece. Girls can take their flower home.
- Play What Flower/Vegetable Am I? Tape seed packets to the back of each guest. They get clues from other players to help them guess what they are.
- Girls just want to have fun. Let "ladies" change into play clothes for a Watering-Can Relay. Have racers fill a plastic watering can with water at one bucket and race to another bucket to dump it.
- Hold a traditional relay but racers hand off a flower instead of a baton, or try other garden-y games like leapfrog.
- Help girls plant a large patio planter with a variety of annuals. (Even little ladies love getting their hands dirty!)
- Stage an old-fashioned tea-leaf reading: dress-up with a floppy garden hat and predict the girls' futures from tea cups.
Fab Party Favors
- packet of seeds and gardening gloves
- flower-themed gifts from the dollar store, including small booklets, pads and pencils
- pretty dollar-store jewelry
- second-hand teacup and saucer set
- straw hat with flowers
- hand each guest a fresh flower as they leave
- tiny terracotta pots filled with jelly beans, wrapped in cellophane and tied with curly ribbon
tip: place favors in a kids' watering can
