Fancy Tea Party – part one

If it was nice outside, it would have been lovely to have had Nicole’s Fancy Tea Party outdoors and I could have taken some lovely photos. It’s ridiculously hot out, though, and let me tell you, we have AC, we use AC. Sorry, environment. At least I use my recycling bins.

Here’s some pictures I took before everyone arrived of the house all ‘fancied’ up for the little party.I found this apothecary jar at Home Outfitters in the clearance section for, wait for it, $8!  Ha. Very pleased. It was full of fake limes and lemons. For today I filled it with ‘treasures’ (silk scarf, glitter, beads, and some jewelry) and a picture print of a grid of photos of Nicole at 6 months. Look how big that apothecary jar is! And I tied back the curtains with tulle and some ribbon, and finally hung the newest addition to my display wall, that funky clock on the top. I’ll take a better picture of that later this week, it’s basically an oval and looks a lot like an old stopwatch. Makes me happy~~~~!~ As you can see, I still haven’t settled on anything in the ‘new curtains’ category. Suddenly I’m thinking of being very dramatic (or perhaps predictable, if you look at everything else I do) and getting something black, with the white sheers staying on. What say you? Prettied up Chris’ record player with flowers in tiny vases and a big fake flower… the balloon was his own little touch. I put a rug down to have somewhere to sit and open presents and put down the ones from us, along with her Fancy Nancy books. (In the end there was nowhere for her to sit on the rug, it was too full of presents, haha.)The view from the front door… I wish I’d gotten a picture of Nicole’s face when this is what she saw. She was sleeping when she came back from her lunch at Grandma’s house with her, we kind of had to prod her awake but once she saw this she was instantly alert! That smile made it all worth it. The table set up all fancy with her chair dolled up… I decided I’m going to start doing a Birthday Chair every birthday, themed for whoever it’s meant for. Hopefully by October 2011 my hubby will catch on what I’m up to and I’ll get a special throne made up for me, too. ;D This is as close as you can get to the cake without bursting into hysterical laughter. I’ll do a post on what was truly a cake fail later. For now you can see that it looks like a child made it out of playdoh. Its still cute and acceptable from here, though. It gets better. A post for another time. A little vignette of pictures of Nicole and some more fancy things. In the back is a ‘year in photos’ collage from her first year, something I intended to do yearly for birthday parties but forgot to do last year. Perhaps I’ll whip one up in photoshop in time for this year’s party…  Of course, last but not least, a little teapot! I picked it up at a thriftstore. Try not to overanalyze this, but that’s the only thing (aside from the balloons and cake ingredients, and the number candle of course) that I picked up specifically for the party. Everything else I already had on hand. I just don’t normally put it all together like that! I’m stocking up for when my husband dies and this is a girl house I like to have pretty little touches here and there.