Curiouser and Curiouser...

Along with these birthday-slumber-tea-party photos, it only seems fitting to share some of my favorite Alice in Wonderland quotes...

 A mad tea party...

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter, "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

"Be what you would seem to be- or, if you'd like it put more simply - Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

"Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Said the Cat "We're all mad here. I'm mad.You're mad." "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

"I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir, because I'm not myself, you see?"

"How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be from one minute to another."

"Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." replied the Cat. "I don't much care where - " "Then it doesn't matter which way you go."

"Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up; if not, I'll stay down here 'til I'm somebody else."

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."

"Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to! I am never going back there again!"

Check out the birthday girl's pre-party portraits from a few weeks ago.


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Party planning tips for the birthday-slumber-tea-party

While I have photographed children's parties before, this was my first time being deeply involved in the planning and set-up. There are so many great resources in Seattle and online, we want to give credit to those that inspired this party.

Most decorations were made from colorful crepe and tissue paper inspired by these websites:
Crepe Paper Streamers
Tissue Pom Flowers

Teapot, Cups and Accessories:
The teapot, cups and accessories were collected from Value Village and the Lifelong Aids Alliance Thrift Store. All are blue and white, but because they don't belong to a single set each piece has a unique pattern and shape. I was really happy with the result.

Crazy, colorful dress-up clothes:
Rather than purchase the typical disney dress-up outfits, we wanted to inspire the girls' creativity with crazy colorful shirts, dresses, hats and scarves. Nearly all dress-up clothes were purchased from the Downtown Seattle Goodwill Outlet (where you buy clothes by the pound not by item - perfect for little girl dress-up parties).

Party Activities:
The girls each made their own dress-up accessories and posed for photos, inspired by these posts:
Fairy skirts - We used this website as a general guideline, but opted to make the skirts less full and tutu-like and instead long and wispy. Tulle was more expensize than we anticipated so we used a colorful nylon material instead and invited the girls to supplement with crepe paper streamers in between to add color and texture. The girls LOVED them.
Ribbon Wands - Another way we saved money is by having the girls make their ribbon wands using chopsticks (leftover from take-out nights) and crepe paper instead of ribbon (unless you have leftovers lying around the house, rolls of ribbon can get expensive). The girls also used construction paper to cut out shapes to put at the head of their wands (hearts and triangles were most popular).
Edible Candy Necklaces - Instead of candy we poured a big bowl of generic brand Froot Loops for the girls to string their colorful necklaces from.

Party Food:
Tea sandwiches: PB&J and Ham & Cheese sandwiches were cut into triangles and served on platters along side fresh fruit and fish crackers.
Tea: The teapot was filled with hot cocoa and the cream and sugar serving set were filled with creamer, mini marshmellows and sprinkles.
Cake: The girls each received their own individual cupcake. After some deliberation, we decided not to serve ice cream which turned out to be a good choice since the girls had so much fun replenishing the marshmellows, sprinkles and cream in their hot cocoa - more sugar was the last thing they needed.

Party Favors:
Because the girls were already making skirts, necklaces and wands they could take home with them, all we needed were favor bags. The skirts were a bit large for your typical party favor bag, but we picked up some cute re-usable Hello Kitty bags in the Dollar Section at Target.