Mad Hatter Tea Party

This is my second Mad Hatter Tea Party I have thrown.  You can view my other Alice Tea Parties here:  http://consumedbycreativity.blogspot.com/2014/12/first-alice-in-wonderland-party-part-one.html and part 2 is here: http://consumedbycreativity.blogspot.com/2016/03/first-alice-in-wonderland-party-part-2.html

This party was on a smaller scale as far as tons of actors.  When the kids came in the house, I hung a curtain so they could not see into the tea party room.  In front of the curtain I drew and painted the talking door knob on foam core board.  After I drew and painted the door on the foam core board, I cut around half of the door so it could be pushed open.  The children crawled through the rabbit hole once they came in my front door (crawled through some tunnels).  Right before the "talking doorknob" there was a table with keys on it to use on the door to get in.  Once they went through the door, they found themselves in the Tea Party on the other side. 

 Here you can see the backside of the door and a child crawling in.  I bent the sides so the door would be self standing. 

 I had the Very Merry Unbirthday song from Alice in Wonderland playing in the background.  

I found large playing cards on Amazon and hung them with fishing wire from the ceilings.  I found decorative wooden frames at Michael's, spray painted them bright colors and then propped them on the windows at different angles.  

I brought in different benches and chairs from around my house to mix and match and ad to the whimsy.  I had one friend dress up as the Hatter and one dressed up as Alice.   I dressed up as the Red Queen and crashed the party.  

Here are some adorable Wonderland cookies I ordered from a local cookie decorating place. 

There are many DIY's on Pinterest and other sites about Topsey Turvey cakes.  I made the cakes and my friend, the Hatter, decorated them with fondant.  It turned out pretty good for the first time trying it.  It was not that hard. 

We used the big tree in the yard as a backdrop and I drew and colored the props.  I glued them on dowels. 

One of my favorite things that I made were these DIY Toadstools.  So easy and so cute!  DIY tutorial here: http://consumedbycreativity.blogspot.com/2016/03/toadstool-diy.html

Of course what is an Mad Tea  Party without Croquet?? At my previous party I made the croquet characters out of foam core board.  This time they were made out of wood.  As you can see in the photos above, before we played croquet, I used the wooden characters to decorate the Tea Party room.  Also as you can see in this picture, I painted my mallets like flamingos.  Really easy to do.  Spray paint or paint the mallets hot pink, paint half of the mallet head black and add white and black for eyes.  I also found stuffed hedge hog balls on Amazon as well.