Annike's tea party - Kate Landers competition entry

Hello everyone, it is with great pleasure that I finally share the pics of my daughter Annike's 6th birthday tea party that I created back in November 2010. As some of you may remember, I entered a written party design/concept competition back in September on Kate Landers's blog, Kate asked contestants to submit a written party design for a 1930-1960 children's birthday and I received 2nd runner up (yay). Kate has just revealed her vintage doll tea party shoot which incorporates the designs and ideas from the winner and 4 runner ups and Kate has done an INCREDIBLE job of pulling togehter this utterly DEVINE party. Please hop over to Kate Landers's blog to have a read, it has the most amazing details and gorgeous pics, I am sure you will love it as much as I do.

For my design entry I actually decided to re-create the tea party for Annike's birthday on the 6th November 2010 seeing as I went to all that trouble to "dream" it up. So here it is.......

This is the invitation by Style me Gorgeous we sent out to Annike's friends, folded in pink envelopes and topped with a yellow paper doily, I purchased mine from Details, Details! Back in August if you purchased the party ware from the "The Beauty Full Collection" before the end of the month 100% of the sales would be donated to Paradise Kids.

For my submission I did a 1950's vintage tea party, most of my items were handmade or 2nd hand as I did not have a large budget to work with. After doing some initial sketches in my ideas book I chose pink, white and yellow as my colour scheme as I fell in love with the fabric Verna Mosquera ROSES AND HYDRANGEAS Lemon that I saw on Etsy. I ordered several yards along with some co-ordinating fabrics so I could make my ruffle table cloth, cover and old chair and do other crafty items for the birthday party. A couple of weeks before the party I started collecting all the chairs for the party, all were bought 2nd hand from Ebay some for only $5!! Bargain! I didn't touch them as I liked the shabby chic mixed feel the chairs evoked. My eldest daughter Anya and I made the doily bunting from cheap white dollar shop doilies ($2 for 72 various sized doilies) hand dyed and then stapled onto some twine, easy peasy, idea from Martha Stewart

I also collected all the mis-matching 2nd hand china from Ebay, they had some gorgeous pastels for sale at the time I was buying so I snapped them up. I used left over paper doilies as placemats and to dress up some of my serving plates. Scones, jam and cream were homemade by me, white cake plates are from Provincial Living.

Here you can see the birthday girl and her friends enjoying the tea party.

I bought this lovely 2nd hand tea trolley from Ebay, once again I didn't touch it as it was already painted white and looked shabby enough to my liking. I decided to do a biscuit/cookie dessert trolley rather than lolly table for this party, I bought some glass jars (Provincial living, but the dollar shop also sells them) and asked my eldest daughter Anya to label some doilies which we then tied to the jars with twine. We had double choc cookies, Anzac cookies (An Australian/New Zealand treat), Macadamia cookies and short bread cookies. I also made some raspberry flavoured Macarons, a plate of high tea sandwitches and bought some tea pot shaped cookies from Dolls at the Mount, they were delicious! To cover the windows I covered them in black cardboard and wrote the verse "I am a little teapot short and stout, ......" in chalk, it looked really cute.

Here is part of the birthday cake, I wanted a teapot and Annike wanted a fairy teapot cake so we compromised and I made a fairy teapot house complete with fairy sitting on the handle. The cake was raspberry sponge filled with raspberry buttercream icing covered in white chocolate fondant, Annike's favourite.

This is the 2nd part of the birthday cake, since Annike also wanted a rainbow cake, its a rainbow coloured sponge cake (strawberry, orange, lemon, raspberry and chocolate) filled with vanilla bean frosting. I made the teacup, saucer, No 6 topper and fairy from modelling paste, edible chalks, gold lustre dust and Wilton pastes, so it was all edible.

Here is how the two cakes looked together. Vintage white cake stand from Domayne, crystals were later added by me.

Here is the birthday girl Annike, the very talented Maureen from MKsNeedlemania at Esty made Annike's matching birthday dress, isn't it gorgeous? Thank you Maureen, I love it!

I picked up this lovely wrought iron chandelier from Ebay, it went perfectly with my table. All the flowers were generously donated by my friend Sara, her lovely garden was overflowing with roses and I was allowed to just pick whatever I needed (thank you Sara xxx). White teapot is from Provincial living, pink teapot vase (I used some vintage teapots as vases lol) is a 2nd's buy from Ebay.

Ofcourse what is a tea party without yummy cupcakes, so here is a pic of some yummy vanilla and strawberry cupcakes topped with fondant flowers. The gorgeous damask cupcake wrappers are from Kat and Nat from The Cupcake Wrapper Co. Love your products ladies, absolutely LOVE them xxx Cupcake stand is from...yep you guessed it, Ebay lol, once again I added the crystals afterwards to add some bling ;-) (Annike begged me for some "daimonds" because she wanted her party sparkly lol)

Close up of the teapot cookies from Dolls at the Mount, Gingerbread covered in icing sugar, they tasted homemade so super yummy. Hope you enjoyed looking at this party as much as I had hosting it. Thank you Kate Landers for allowing me to be part of such an incredible experience, I loved every minute of creating this party!

Please also say hello on my Facebook page, Just call me Martha, I would love to hear from you.

xxx

Leoni