Throwing a Vintage Tea Party for a Large Crowd. How I did it.

I knew my younger sister Bonnie and my (now) brother in law Eric were talking about marriage long before he officially popped the question to her. As the months went by waiting for things to become official and a date to be set, I started thinking about throwing her bridal shower. I knew that was a job for the "Maid of Honor" but I decided I would be taking that duty off of her hands, whoever she was!  I didn't know at the time that the honor would end up being mine.

I had a vision of a fancy tea party with vintage mismatched china, scones and the women wearing party hats! The party I first envisioned was NOT the same party that my sister got. Small sacrifices had to be made along the way. I realized things were far more expensive than I had ever imagined. Read on to find out how we pulled it all off.

Where I found mismatched China 

My sister had a large guest list so the shower had to be held in a hall.  I couldn't have hired a tea room to do all the work. Not only was it over my budget but the rooms were very small and only held about 25 people. One of the bridesmaids chipped in and I was able to rent a really nice hall in the city that we grew up in. After I had secured a location, I looked into renting beautiful china but that was pricey and I was afraid it would get broken. I found the cheapest option was to actually collect the china myself. At first I scoured yard sales, Craigslist, eBay and Etsy. Everything online was way too much money. I joined freecycle but that didn't pan out. So I figured yard sales would be my best bet.

Out of the many many sales, I can remember 3 yard sales with reasonably priced china. I also found several tea cups at a church flea market in Nahant. My sister Nikki found some very pretty teacup and saucer sets at a flea market, my mother found some pieces for me, I borrowed a bunch, used my own set of second hand china and my mother in law and her sister donated a bunch of teacups to me. The bulk of my china came from Savers and Salvation Army stores. At Savers I found cloth napkins, table cloths, china and tea pots. These stores know what they doing and if something was a big brand the price would reflect that. I splurged on a few prettier pieces because I figured I would keep them for myself after the shower. Most of the china was not high end name brands. Most of it was cheaper stuff and I found a lot of vintage dishes that probably aren't china but they were really pretty!

So right off the bat, I was a little discouraged. The dishes I was collecting weren't like the gorgeous dishes you could rent online. I had no idea how expensive china was because I had never purchased any! I checked out the prices for brand new stuff and I was shocked.

So I settled for whatever I could find. I had a few rules.
1) It all had to be cleanable and chip free. crazing was ok.
2) All the prints had to be floral (there were a few exceptions)
3) no brown or orange 70s looking stuff
4) I was to try and stick to paying under $2 per plate or cup

Savers

I found a lot of incomplete sets for very cheap at Savers. They would group all of the same pattern together in a basket and I got some for as little as 33 cents each dish. Usually though I got a few pieces here and there. Savers supposedly puts out new items every day. I was never able to get there first thing in the morning when they opened but I think that would be the best time to go.

Savers was hit or miss too. You need to go often and to different Savers stores. Lucky for me, Massachusetts has several. Saugus seemed to be a little more expensive for china than Danvers was. We also visited about 4 Savers stores on the south shore. I believe it was the Framingham store that we got the best stuff in one trip.We got like a whole cart full!

 My mother and I went to the Lynn Salvation Army and I found a couple cheap saucers but nothing special. It was such a small store so I never went back. The Saugus store on Route 1 had a ton of stuff. On my first visit, I got a bunch. The prices were very reasonable but I realized after we left that the girl at the register rang everything up wrong. I was annoyed but it was all still cheap so I figured whatever. When I went back the china was all marked up for much more money. I had to be choosier because they were often more money than Savers charged. Then I discovered the warehouse in back of the retail store. I would say the average price I paid in the warehouse was 50 cents- $1. Sometimes I got things cheaper because the person at the register didn't want to ring it up separately so they gave me a deal. I also got vases here for cheap too.  I never had time to visit any other Salvation Army stores. I found with the one in Saugus, it was best to go every few weeks.

 

Teapots,Tea and Food

At first I planned on having cute little tea pots on every table so each person could pour their own tea. Then I started thinking... How and where would the guests get the water for the pots? After much research, I realized that the pots were too expensive to purchase brand new and with that many people it didn't really make sense. I thought of having "waiters" serve tea but that didn't seem like it was going to work. Finally, I decided what we had to do was a tea buffet. I purchased a huge water percolator and set up a table with the hot water and a selection of extra cups and all kinds of different flavors of tea. Little bags for guests to take tea home were provided. If you decide to do this for a party, do not just wash out a coffee percolator. Your tea will taste funny if coffee has ever been made in it.

Hot water and coffee station

Tea bag buffet with extra cups

It didn't feel right to not have tea pots at all so I collected those with the help of my mother. They cost between $3 and $8 a piece at Savers and at yard sales. My Aunt Lisa helped me with arranging flowers inside the teapots. We used the tea pots for the table centerpieces. My Aunt got me some of the supplies and flowers and my mother and I went shopping for the rest at grocery stores a couple days before the shower.

Grocery store flower bouquets

 .
I really wanted each table to have tiered servers with little sandwiches and scones but it wasn't meant to be. Those tiered china plates cost at least $40 and I would have needed one for each table. I wanted to have cute little tea party sandwiches but there was no way there would be any time to make them.  Instead what we did was put on each table an assortment of mini muffins, breads and scones cut into pieces. Some of the scones I bought and some my mother made.

 I ordered finger sandwich platters from Market Basket and got a lot of bulk hors d'oeuvre foods at BJ's. They had Spanikopita, baklava, and other finger foods. I made a few things, my parents made some food and my future sister in law made to die for carrot cake cupcakes. I bought cute little pastries from whole foods. We put all the small desserts on tiered trays that my father made with wood and I painted pink and covered them with doilies. I borrowed trays, cupcake holders and whatever else I could get from family and friends.

I agonized over the cake. I wanted it to be perfect! I don't think anyone would have thought less of me if I had just gotten a sheet cake but I wanted the cake to be extra special. My Aunt Alice offered to pay for it so that was awesome. The cake was 3 different flavors, had 3 tiers and on top sat one of my grandmothers vintage tea cups. They decorated the cake to match the cup! I loved it! It was really special to me because my grandmother passed away before my sisters engagement and this was a way to include her. My grandmother would always ask me "Do you think they will get married"?

Tablecloths and Invitations

One of the things I really wanted was to have real linen table cloths. After researching cost to buy or rent I realized that it was another thing I couldn't afford to do. I decided to skip the fancy tablecloths and napkins. My mother made large table toppers for the center of the tables. We decided that we would get plastic lined paper tablecloths and use the fabric over the paper. There wasn't anything to pick from in the fabric store! I wanted floral tea party-ish prints and Joanne fabrics didn't have much!! I got a few prints there and then luckily found pretty fabric on fabric.com
The table toppers came out great but then I couldn't find round paper tablecloths anywhere!  I had to settle for plastic.Not a big deal but just another thing that didn't go as planned. I bought the plastic table cloths at Party City.  I believe there is a big difference in quality over the dollar store so it was worth a few extra dollars.

I was against making the invitations. I wanted to order them but my mom and my husband thought the DIY ones were very cute and would save a lot of money. They were right. I found the pattern online and I luckily found scrap book paper on clearance at Walmart. I only spent $3-5 on scrap paper books that are usually like $20. Instructions I used found here.

Hats and Fascinators

My girls

I wanted this to be an extra special party that people would remember. I knew not many people had a tea party hat or a fascinator to wear so I decided one would be provided for them. Then they could take it home so it would be a party favor. Only problem with wanting to do this was the cost. Who knew Sun hats cost $25-$38? I sure didn't. I scoured the internet for fascinators and they were expensive too. The solution was to DIY all the fascinators and hats.

hats and fascinators hanging in our sun porch

I looked for hats on clearance after the summer. Kohls regular price was $38 on their hats and I got them for under $4 each. I just happened to be shopping at Lane Bryant and found that they had a bin of sun hats on clearance for $5 each so I bought them all. I went online and bought feathers, rhinestones and tulle. I shopped at Christmas time at Michael's when they had 60% off sales and I got stuff after the holidays on clearance. My aunt gave me a whole box of silk flowers. I looked for supplies wherever I went while I was also collecting china and all the other stuff I collected.We went crazy with the glue gun!

My parents dining room table was turned into a fascinator workshop. Day after day my mother and I created works of art. I got my daughters to help too. Some were really pretty and others were hysterical. We had fun with it.

How I made fascinators

I didn't plan on making a blog post so I never took any step by step photos. Basically what I did was make a base out of felt. Some were rectangle shapes and some were circles. I glued pipe cleaners around the edges of the felt to give it some stability. Then I would flip my shape over and decorate it with hot glue, fake flowers, tulle, feathers etc. when I was done decorating I attached the pipe cleaner side to an alligator clip or a hair comb. Some I glued onto headbands.

Party Favors
Each guest could choose either a hat or a fascinator when they arrived at the shower. I had the hats laid out on a table and hat boxes filled with fascinators. We also had many flavors of tea and take home bags. I made favors that were conversation hearts (party was in Feb) wrapped in tulle and inside little silver baskets but not many people took those home. I also gave away the tea pot flower centerpieces.

Photo Booth

I thought since we would all be dressed up and wearing ridiculous hats anyway, there should be photos! My cousin Jen had a photo booth at her sisters bridal shower and she was nice enough to let me borrow the frame! She even set it up for me that day!!  The back drop we used was long curtain swags purchased by my mom at a yard sale. My husband was the photographer. I collected props and had extra headpieces for everyone. Here are some photos of the kids modeling.

 

My son was a huge help!

Preparation, Clean Up and Help

One of the worst tasks before the shower was washing the dishes that I had collected. A little trick I learned was to put vinegar into a spray bottle and spray onto price stickers and it let it soak in. After a while the sticker will wipe right off.  Savers uses these weird markers. The writing came off but to make my life easier I scrubbed all the dishes with Mr. Clean erasers. Then I rewashed them again with soap. I wanted to make sure they were extra clean. When I realized hand washing was taking too long I started to use my mothers huge dishwasher.

I organized the dishes into boxes by table. I made sure not to repeat any patterns per box. So into each box went 8 mismatched plates, 8 saucers, 8 teacups, plastic utensils wrapped up with mismatched cloth napkins, a sugar dish, a creamer, ...and then finally the tablecloth and topper went on top before the box was shut. When someone started to unpack it they could put the tablecloths on first and then set the table.

Have you wondered yet how I transported table settings for 80 people, plus centerpieces, hats, fascinators and all the other things needed to the function hall? That thought didn't occur to me until a couple months before the shower. The only answer was to rent a moving truck. To sell this idea to my husband I suggested that the couch that we were buying be picked up that night (using the truck) after the shower. Luckily he went for it!



 Day of the party
We only had 2 hours to set up at the hall and I got there 30 minutes late in the truck. We had a lot of help and we all ran around getting ready. Bridesmaids showed up early and helped unload the moving truck, one brother helped in the kitchen, another drove my kids to the hall. I don't even remember who picked up the food! My sons girlfriend, my cousin was there, my parents, sisters...I could go on and on. I had a huge crew of people to help the day of.  Even the first few guests offered to help and I gladly accepted! 

The clean up was basically shoving stuff in boxes and loading the truck. We had a lot of help with that too and several guests helped us which was great. We also had to load up all my sisters gifts into cars to take home.
Throwing this party was a ton of work. You need to know what you want and actually like to do this sort of thing. I collected dishes for over a year and a half. I spent months on projects. You will need a lot of help with these projects and also the day of. I even had my daughters boyfriend helping us make fascinators :)  I could not have managed this if not for all the help I had. I can't stress this enough.


 Aftermath
 I'm not going to lie, washing all the dirty dishes afterwards sucked!. I let them sit for quite some time in the boxes while we picked away at washing them. It was just such a huge project and our dish washer sucks. Luckily they weren't that dirty.. Just crumbs or at worst some frosting on them. Over a year later I had boxes of china around the house and cabinets full of it. I returned the stuff I borrowed and slowly went through it all. I kept the set my Aunt gave me (that I already had before the shower planning) and I am keeping my favorite pieces. I sold the rest.



Looking back my only regret is that I didn't have a photographer. That is usually my job and I assumed other people would take pictures. They didn't. Luckily, one of my sisters bridesmaids went around to each table for me and took photos of everyone and some of my sister opening her gifts. I just regret not having more photos of all the details that we worked so hard on!

A huge thank you to my mother, father and my husband who helped me so much in the months getting ready for this party. My parents allowed me to use their house for all my projects and for a while I kind of took over. There was no room to work at my house because it was filled with dishes! My husband accompanied me on endless trips to yard sales and Savers stores and stopped me when I attempted to buy a plain piece of china out of desperation!

I hope reading about my sisters party helped you if you are thinking of throwing a tea party. Let me know if there is anything I forgot to cover or if you have any questions!

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The Halloween that Did Not Go According to Plan

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. I have lots of good memories of Halloween. My mother would actually make our Halloween costumes. She would get a pattern and let us pick out fabrics. They were really good quality and lasted for years. Several kids in our family got use out of the costumes that my mother made over the years.

three costumes my mother made

She also decorated the large bay windows in front of our house with light up ceramics that she had painted. Eventually us kids grew older, and she wasn't sewing costumes any longer or taking us out trick or treating. She began to transform the front of her house into Halloween scenes. Each year she went with a theme. She did a Halloween wedding, Aliens (complete with space ship), there was a Pirate ship one year and another years theme was The Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow. There is a train station across from my mothers home and people heading into Salem during the month of October would check out her displays and a photo of my parents house usually made it into the newspaper.

Headless horseman Halloween display

Halloween wedding display

My kids usually trick or treated with my youngest sister Angela, we started to trick or treat in my mothers neighborhood after she moved there. We've gone there now for the past 14 years.  Halloween night has always been fun. Since I loved my Halloweens growing up, It was always important to me that my kids got to have the same sort of experience.

Jeremy as Goldberg the wrestler, Amanda the princess and Angela as Minnie Mouse

Over the years the older kids moved on. We just had our two youngest girls to take out. Last year Stephanie left us and went with her friends. We were down to one child to take trick or treating.

 As Halloween approached this year, I was pretty bummed. I knew that this would be the last year that my husband and I would take our youngest daughter out on Halloween. It made me really sad! With no more kids to take out, what would we do on Halloween?  It felt worse to me than when the "Big Santa Secret" had finally been revealed to all the kids in our home.

This year we went to Savers in search of costumes. I always liked to try and come up with a good costume for the kids before I resorted to buying something prepackaged and overpriced. The girls wanted to paint their faces as Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls. Stephanie found a dress but we weren't having the best luck with finding one for Alyssa. Then I saw they had old wedding dresses that had been sprayed with black spray paint. These were legit wedding dresses for $15!

We got it and I was much happier. I had all these ideas about how FUN this year was going to be for the kids. I worked on Alyssa's dress and hand sewed it and tried to devise a way to keep it off the ground and prevent her from tripping on it.

The 31st came and I had a few last minute things to do. It should have been quick and easy. Instead, the day started to go down hill for me...

  I just wanted to add a flower to pre-existing fascinators I had left over from my sisters tea party bridal shower. I couldn't find the wire cutters to cut the stems off of the fake flowers. I finally figured that out and the glue would hardly come out of the glue gun. It took some finagling but I finally got the hair pieces together. All that needed to be done was to carve my pumpkin.

The pumpkin was a pain in my ass! Of course I picked a huge one, and of course I planned on carving an elaborate sugar skull. Last minute on Halloween I should have just abandoned that idea. I really had nothing else I needed to do so I figured why not? Nothing was going right with it and I was getting aggravated.

Stephanie got home from school and she got her costume on and was all ready for make up. Howie was leaving work early to pick up Alyssa from her Friday after school program. As soon as she came in, I would get her made up and then I'd change and we'd go to my mothers. It all sounded like a really good plan.

Just before I was going to start Steph's make up, my oldest daughter Amanda was sawing her pumpkin and the table shook. A HUGE cup of chocolate milk literally came flying at me. I was covered in milk and so was my iPhone. I started to freak out because there was no case on my phone and it was sitting in a pool of milk. We ran around and got that mess cleaned up and I dried my phone out as much as I possibly could. Too many minutes had gone by. Minutes that should have been spent applying make up.

 I ran into stupid problems doing Stephanie's make up. It was trial and error but I thought I did a good job on it. The wasted minutes were adding up and it was getting later and later.

Steph

 Steph left to meet her friends while I hurried through Alyssa's make up. Lets just say that Alyssa wasn't as cooperative as her sister was while I was trying to paint her face. We were running late so Howie had to drop Amanda at my mothers.  Alyssa's friend was meeting her there at 6. There was no way I could have had Alyssa ready and there by 6 so Amanda had to be there to greet the girl. You would think that we could have just called and told her to come later but Alyssa didn't have her phone number!

Alyssa

Poor Howie was making several trips back and forth from my mothers house. When he came back, I laced up Alyssa's wedding dress and Howie hurried her over to my mothers. She was 30 minutes late. I didn't have time to take a shower so I ran upstairs, grabbed a towel, wet half of it and covered it with soap so I could scrub myself. I was worried I would smell like rotten milk all night. As I am doing this my husband is walking around with the girls trick or treating. It took me less than 20 minutes to clean up, get dressed, brush my hair and slap some make up on. I called Howie to come back and get me. When he got back he grabbed the 4 carved pumpkins we had and put them in the van. As I am about to leave the house, Alyssa called me and was bitching about her wedding dress. She sent me on a wild goose chase looking for a particular shirt that was not there. I gave up looking and grabbed a red dress and ran out the door.

We were driving towards my moms house (which is only a 5 minute drive from ours). As we turned onto her street we found it was blocked off half way down by a cop car with his lights flashing. I got out of the van and started to walk while Howie had to turn the van around and find another way to drive there. I had my heavy camera bag and another with Halloween candy and Alyssa's extra dress. I was out of breath from hurrying. I was pretty much across the street from her house when my mother called me and said that they are almost out of candy.  I was about to cry! They were out of candy already? It was 7:20 and Halloween was almost over. People would be shutting their lights off around 8:00. I thought about the police car I had just passed. There was also an ambulance and a person was on a stretcher. That person on the stretcher was having a worse day than I was. I crossed the street to my parents house and dumped the candy in the bowl.

The annoyances didn't end there but I tried not to get upset. It was 7:30 and we were just lighting up Jack o lanterns...It seemed pointless but we had already spent all that time carving them!

It was just one thing after another of things going wrong! All very small and stupid things thankfully. I never got to trick or treat with my daughter, She took her dress off and trick or treated with out it. (I later made her put it back on!) I didn't get the photos I wanted to. I didn't get any group shots with my sister and her kids. We were super late to my brothers Halloween party... It wasn't all bad though. Both of my daughters had a fun night with their friends. They also both had strangers ask to take a picture with them because they loved their costume. So the night wasn't a total failure after all! Later we had a nice time while at my brothers house.

I felt like Karma wasn't done with me yet. I must have done something to someone in a past life? Maybe it was on Halloween?? I woke up in the middle of the night yelling in pain. I had calf cramps from hell. The worst I've ever had and they would not subside. I slowly hobbled into the bathroom, I wet a towel with hot water in the tub and cried as I sat there with it wrapped around my leg. The cramp eventually went away but my leg bothered me the next couple days.

As I've gotten older, Ive learned to try to accept these sort of inevitable disappointments and problems. I can't always plan everything out perfectly. Sure, I can try, but I need to be able to shrug it off when things don't go my way. With a big family, often times things don't go as you hoped and planned.  That's just reality. The next day I read that a 13 yr old girl was killed by a train on Halloween night. I cried for her family's loss. Here I was feeling sorry for myself that my little girl was growing up and doing what kids are supposed to do. I felt ashamed.

It's probably normal to miss the past and wish that things stayed the same. I don't know what will become of our future Halloweens. I was never able to sew costumes or decorate for my kids like my mother did for my brothers, sisters and me. Our kids had a fun Halloween every year just the same. My daughters and their friends had a fun night even though I felt like nothing was going right. Oh well, crap happens. Everything could have been so much worse. It wasn't and I am grateful for that. As for the future, I know that we'll figure something out. We'll find our new Halloween tradition. Or more likely, it will find us.

Fall Foliage Weekend 2012 Day#2 The Pumpkin People

On our second day of our foliage trip (read about day #1 here), we had to check out of our room at Nordic Village by 11am.  It was foggy and seemed like it might rain so we decided to look for the Pumpkin People. Residents and businesses in Jackson New Hampshire (and neighboring towns in the Mount Washington Valley)  make displays out of pumpkins. Some of them are very impressive!

 That year, 2012,  it was the 25th anniversary of the Pumpkin People.  There were tons of locations, far too many Pumpkin People Displays to post them all. I will just post some of my favorites here.

We stopped at several businesses in Jackson to get photos of Pumpkin People. It's like a scavenger hunt and we tried to get them all!

The display at Flossies General Store

I also found this grasshopper willing to model for me on a flower...

The Snowflake Inn had a pretty cool display of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

This is what a typical street in Jackson looks like.

It's such a gorgeous place! We drove around looking for Pumpkin People and I took as many photos of the scenery as I could.

Eagle Mountain House had Hocus Pocus witches

They also had this pretty decorated area.

Carter Notch Inn had Redneck Pumpkin People, in a camouflage truck, drinking beers!

We stopped at Jackson Falls. The Falls are on Carter Notch Rd. The Wildcat River runs down the steep hill and there is plenty of spots to hang out along the falls.

 

This photo was taken at the end of the hill, off the bridge looking downstream.

 

The Wentworth had Leprechauns hanging around out front.

Our next destination was up Pinkham Notch to Wildcat Mountain and to the Mount Washington Auto Road. We wanted to see foliage and these locations were on the Pumpkin People list. It was about a fifteen minute drive to get to Wildcat Mountain and this is what we saw when we got there...

Wildcat Mountain seemed closed and we couldn't find any Pumpkin People anywhere so we went up the road to the Great Glen Trails/ Mt Washington Auto Road. I think tickets to both attractions are in the same building. There are hiking and biking trails on one side and the auto road is across the highway.

They had a pumpkin people display!

Ya see what they did there? That pumpkin family is looking at the Old Man in the Mountain... made of pumpkins. Genius!

We could not see Mt Washington

There's a car coming down the auto road. I don't know what kind of views there were in the fog?

We headed south down Rt 16, back towards Jackson.

The Red fox Bar & Grille had this Thriller themed Pumpkin People display. It was great!

After we got away from the Zombies, we got back in the van and our next stop was at Story Land. Their display was pretty cool too!!

We drove next to route 302 up towards Crawford Notch.

It wasn't as foggy over by Attitash 

We stopped on 302 at scenic spot where you can view Mt Washington in the distance.. Not this day you couldn't! We did see some pretty wildflowers though.

We stopped at Willey Pond.. I love that place so we always stop there.

Then we drove by the Mt Washington Hotel and Resort.   

It was beautiful . As usual.

I don't know where our next stop was, I know it was further north up 302. I read there was a waterfall and swimming hole past Bretton Woods. I don't remember it's name now but we found it, parked and went for a walk in the woods.

We were walking for a few minutes and I realized I was really creeped out! It was very pretty but it was starting to get dark. I was very nervous we would encounter a black bear or a moose! After a few minutes of walking and not seeing a waterfall, we turned around and walked back to the van. 

We started our trip home. We stopped at several places along the way home, mostly in North Conway. We got all the Pumpkin People crossed off the list that year. All but a few places that didn't have their displays up for whatever reason. We drove home in the dark feeling like we had accomplished something. That was the first and last time we managed to cross them all of the list.

If you are interested, I have a whole set of Pumpkin People photos from over the years Here.

I also have hundreds of fall foliage photos from 2008-2012 Here.

I hope you enjoyed these photos from our 2012 trip. I can't wait to go again this year, Hopefully I wont wait 2 years to edit this years photos!

©RachelC.Photography and ©rachelcphotoblog.blogspot.com, ♥A memory is a photograph taken by the heart, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to ©RachelC.Photography and  ©rachelcphotoblog.blogspot.com, ♥A memory is a photograph taken by the heart, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.