Tea Party Table Setting - For the Dolls

Just a couple more tea party things - I promise!  The girls had so much fun I just had too many things to share with all of you, haha.  If you haven't seen the rest of the posts about my daughter's tea party birthday, just put tea party in the search box and you'll find all kinds of recipes for food, drinks and desserts, a birthday cake idea, and even tips on creating a beautiful table setting.

This tea party originally started as an American Girl tea party.  Then I read some other blogs about exclusivity, etc. of using the term American Girl when talking about the party, so together my daughter and I decided that maybe we should just ask the girls to bring their favorite doll or stuffed animal to join the tea party.  My daughter included "the more the merrier!" when she wrote the invites.  A couple of the girls had American Girl dolls or similar 18" dolls and a couple brought stuffed animals and they all had fun fussing over each other's "friends".

We used a wooden wire spool (like the ones in the hardware store that are mounted to the wall to dispense wire, rope or chain by the foot).  Any short table or a plastic tub with a flat lid would work fine.  Covered floor-length tablecloths you can't tell the difference.  For the chairs, we used gallon paint buckets covered with a cloth napkin - these perfectly covered the paint buckets and put the dolls at just the right height to the table.

I found two plastic tea sets with setting for 4 each at the local big box retailer for $4.99 per set.  This meant we had an extra teapot, creamer and sugar which we just set aside.  Each doll or stuffed animal had a cup, saucer, plate and spoon that went home with them at the end of the party for future play fun.  A small purple aster that matched the one on the girls' table was used for the centerpiece.  We had found mini heart-shaped metal tins on clearance for $.75 each in the wedding supplies at the big box store and filled them with fall-colored M&Ms.  

The girls had a lot of fun and excitement over the fact that their dolls had their own special tea party when they arrived and spent quite a while setting them up just perfectly.

When the girls had finished their game of croquet, they played with the dolls and "fed them" the M&Ms while we got the birthday cake ready.  It was a lot of fun for them and nice to have something that would keep them busy without having to direct a game while we cleared their table and got ready for the extra cake guests.  A very fun way to spend the afternoon!