A couple of weeks ago, my sweet little girl turned T-W-O. 
I can’t quite believe how fast we’ve arrived at this age. It really doesn’t seem that long ago that she was this dark haired teeny baby. And now her hair has gone so light and she’s walking around and talking, hiding, making mess, being cranky, laughing hysterically, helping me bake, helping me ‘clean’, having tea parties, giving the best hugs, playing with puzzles and torturing her big brother. 
We decided to just go with a small family birthday for Chloe. And since we only have one other family member here, small means tiny! One of my oldest friends also came to celebrate with us on the day. 
Even though it was going to be a very small party, I still felt like going with a bit of a theme so I went with an afternoon high tea theme and found a lot of inspiration on Pinterest. {you can see a bunch of very cute stuff I’ve pinned here}. 
I did need to stick to a budget and I challenged myself to buy nothing new for the table etc {except for a tea pot and some tea cups because we didn’t have any}. I found a Maxwell and Williams tea pot for $19.95 and bought some tea cups at Ikea. The rest we already owned.
I made tissue paper pom poms after seeing how gorgeous they were at my Sister in law’s wedding. She made them herself and pointed me in the direction of Martha Stewart’s tutorial. They were pretty easy except un-ruffling them took a bit of practice and was much more time consuming than I thought. It was worth it in the end though! I just used tissue paper I already had but did have to buy florist wire {from Spotlight}. Though I think string would have worked ok.
So the night before I just spread a pretty tea towel down as the ‘tablecloth’, hung the tissue paper pom poms and then placed her gifts on the table ready for her in the morning. Super easy. I used some tissue paper and some doilies from the craft cupboard to decorate the plain paper and also used a recycled bottle and jar with some artificial flowers from her room for the table decorations.
In the morning our sweet Chloe was very surprised to see the little table set up and she really enjoyed opening her gifts. This is such a beautiful age and she really seemed to get that this day was all about her.
The kids then just played with the gifts while hubby and I made a special birthday breakfast. These gifts were a hit, Chloe absolutely loved them. The wooden mixer set is a Le Toy Van {it came with a wooden 2 tiered plate but we hadn’t assembled it yet!} and the tea set is shatter proof melamine from HABA. We also gave her an art smock and a wooden rainbow puzzle. 
After lunch I set up their little tea party table. I kept it pretty simple!
I bought these cute little tea cups and saucers from Ikea for $3.95 each. The little tea pot is mine from when I was little and had a tea pot collection. It’s the only one left it seems!
I then gave them Chloe’s new little melamine tea pot filled with room temp vanilla tea for them to pour and enjoy {without me having to worry about them breaking my very old little tea pot haha}. They had little snacks of mini quiche, cupcakes, chicken and mayo sandwiches, chocolate tarts, scones with jam and cream and mini cheesecakes to enjoy. 
I loved this, they had so much fun and I think sat there for 45 minutes just drinking, eating and giggling. We watched and took photos and I had also set up the same stuff {but with hot tea} on the dining table for the 4 adults.
And then we did cake!
If you follow a little delightful’s facebook page you may have seen me post my ruffle icing fail photo. I had really wanted to do up the cake like this, but it just wasn’t working for me. I baked two small 10cm cakes and placed this in a large tea cup I bought for $6.95 from Bed Bath and Table. 
So I started the icing all over again and just went with simple and decided to use some left over fabric from Chloe’s embroidery hoop wall art to make a small bunting for the cake. In the end I loved it!

So there it is, Chloe’s pretty easy 2nd Birthday Tea Party. The very best thing of all was that she had a great time… and I actually got to see her have a great time! :o}
x
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