Tea Party Idea: The Bird Sanctuary

Photo courtesy: gregolsenart.com/

My close friend and I have been having fancy tea parties with our daughters ever since they were five years old. We usually have one in the spring and another in the autumn. Today, I'd like to share one we hosted several years back. I've had a lovely time reflecting upon that day as I wrote this post. Maybe you would like to try this sometime.

Theme: The Bird Sanctuary Tea House

Verse: "Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:30,31

Colors: Yellow and Green

Invitations: Invitations were mailed a week ahead of time with bird seed sprinkled in the envelope. The invitations themselves were in the shape of a bird cage that opened. The scripture verse was also inside. Unfortunately, we no longer have our invitations to show you.

Decorations: We decorated the patio balcony for this occasion with potted spring flowers. We hung our parakeet cage in the shade. His merry chirping made a pleasant background sound. If you don't have a bird, you can record bird sounds from the Internet and play them as well. We strew flowers and bird seed all over the table, then placed paper napkins that had birds and flowers on them at each place setting. We did not buy any new dishes but used our fancy dinnerware. The children made a sign that said:

WELCOME TO THE
BIRD SANCTUARY
TEA HOUSE.

Menu: We cut out birds from old nature magazines and glued them onto folded green or yellow construction paper, shaping the edges with craft scissors. You can also find beautiful images by James Audubon here. Our menu reflected the bird theme and was hand-lettered in cursive by a young writer:

Luncheon
Monte Cristo Sandwiches
Bird's Nest Salad
Chick pea medley
Pink Flamingo

Dessert
Snicker Doodle Tweets

Tea time
Choice of:
Maple Coffee
Vanilla Coffee
Herbal teas

We hope you enjoy it!

The Bird's Nest Salad was a real winner. We bought little speckled partridge eggs, available in most supermarkets now, and boiled them, placing them inside a 'nest' of shredded carrots and lettuce with a kid-friendly dressing. The children loved peeling and eating the eggs.

The Pink Flamingo drink was simply pink lemonade with a fancy party favor and straw poking out the side.

We chose Chick Pea Medley because it sounded so cute and I had already found a simple cold dish recipe to use with chick peas, fennel seed, feta cheese and a special sauce.

You will notice from the scrapbook picture that we do not try to make the menu and invitations perfect. If children participate and we truly want them to have a good time, the mothers don't take over, but let them make little mistakes and 'own' the project. This makes for happier memories, albeit imperfect decor.

Craft: We taught the children to cross stitch. Each was given a little kit in a bag with everything they needed to make a VERY simple project. You can come up with your own or buy them ready made at a craft store. It is important that their first exposure to this is successful! Keep it short and sweet. We gave them a few patterns to choose from and chose projects that wouldn't take more than a couple hours or so to complete. We all worked together on ours for about 40 minutes.

*Another craft idea: is Paint ready made miniature bird houses with acrylics and hot glue a little fake bird on the perch. These look nice in the kitchen up high on a shelf. You can also make simple bird suet to hang in a tree by hot gluing a ribbon to a fat Popsicle stick, spread natural peanut butter or animal fat on it and cover it with bird seed. Wrap in saran wrap, letting the ribbon hang out.
(I think the maximum amount of money we have spent on a tea party was about twenty dollars.)


one step at a time...