Evelyn's Tea Party Birthday Party

This afternoon we hosted Evelyn's 8th birthday party at our house.  Here's a shot of our house before the guests arrived...the living room would be used for big movement activities (including pin-the-flower-on-the-tea-cup), the piano room would be transformed into the crafts area, and the girls would dine in the kitchen, of course.

 As the guests arrived, we were playing music for freeze dance.  Then we moved to the kitchen for some "tea" (aka pink lemonade) and snacks - grapes, butterfly crackers and cheese slices that were cut into hearts, stars and flowers.  I can't specifically recall what was said, but the girls had a lively conversation while snacking.

 Next on the agenda was a marshmallow spoon race.  Within a set time, the two teams of girls had to get the most marshmallows from one bowl to another bowl across the room.  It was a very close game - one team had 45 marshmallows, but the other team won with 46.

 Then the girls tried book balancing.  About half the guests had never tried walking while balancing a book on their heads.  Lots of books took a nose-dive, but a great time was had by everyone.  The next activities were making newspaper hats (I'll write about that in a separate post), playing pin-the-flower-on-the-tea-cup, and me reading a picture book about a bossy tea party host (Not Another Tea Party by Mark Shulman).

 Evelyn requested cupcakes for her tea party, and I arranged the sweet treats on a cupcake stand.  We strategically placed eight candles and proceeded to sing Happy Birthday to our little Peanut.  Since there were a few minutes left at the end of the party, the girls played tea party BINGO until their parents came (they used Froot Loops as the BINGO markers).  Even though the party lasted two hours, the time flew by!