For my daughters 9th birthday, I wanted to do something small but special. After throwing a few ideas around with her, we both settled on a ‘High Tea’ at the House of Gabriel. The House of Gabriel is a gorgeous café & gift shop situated on the picturesque Tweed River in Tumbulgum, Northern NSW, Australia. We chose to have it at the House of Gabriel as it is one of our favourite places to go and have a hot chocolate on our ‘girls only’ days.
Tammi & I decided to colour theme the High Tea around Abi’s favourite colours being pink and green.
The dessert table included the birthday cake, cupcakes, cake pops, coconut ice, meringues, wrapped chocolates and lollies, styled on both antique and new cake plates.
We included the party favours on the dessert table. A white wire basket held the pink and white dotted paper bags, which were filled with a note pad and pen.
Little lolly bottles were decorated with paper doilies and placed throughout the dessert table.
For our garland, we decided to do something a little different and use hand dyed paper doilies. Having never dyed doilies before, we found a tutorial by Charlottes Fancy which was very easy to follow. Our tip is to WEAR some plastic gloves otherwise you will have colored fingernails for days!
Abi requested a six tiered rainbow birthday cake, so we made it with alternate layers of pink and turquoise to keep with the colour scheme.
On the table where the girls sat, we started with some turquoise mason jars and used them as vases to hold an array of different white and pink flowers. We then added some round placements layered with white lace doilies. We used a mix of old teacups and saucers in different pink & green colour waves for the girls to enjoy hot chocolates from. We also tied some turquoise vintage fabric around the teaspoons to jazz them up a little.
We bought some gorgeous turquoise glass paint and hand painted some mason jars. These were really easy to do but we found that it worked better if you thinned out the turquoise paint with a glass paint thinner. One tip though, after baking the painted jars in the oven, leave them in the oven until they are completely cool!
As it was a High Tea, we decided that games wouldn’t really be appropriate. But we did include one that we thought would be suitable – A Conversation Starter. We found some cute little pink and white paper pages and popped a luggage tag inside that we had written the start of a sentence eg: ‘If you could be anything, what would it be?’. The girls really enjoyed it and there were lots of giggles when giving the responses.
The High Tea was filled with some of Abi’s favourite food – mars bar slice, chocolate brownies, cupcakes and scones with jam and cream.
We found some cute bottles with corks in them and turn them into little water bottles.
A small drink station was set up with a drink dispenser of pink lemonade.
To decorate the drinking mason jars, we simply tied different textured & colored ribbons around the jars and added some buttons and flowers as embellishments.
We also must say a huge THANK YOU to our gorgeous friend Zina, for all her help!
Love
Bec & Tammi
Vendor List
Mason Drinking Jars ~ RubyJu Party Boutique
Cake, Cupcakes, Meringues, Coconut Ice & Cake Pops ~ RubyJu
House of Gabriel ~ Tumbulgum, NSW
Ribbons, Lace, Doilies, Glass jars, Glass Paint, Scrapbook supplies ~ Spotlight
Lolly Pops ~ The Little Big Company & Goody Goody Gum Drops
Chocolate Wrappers ~ Green Apple Paperie
Cupcake wrapper ~ Mon Tressor
Just wanted to let you know the link for Mon Tressor doesn't work? I think there was one to many 's'?
Ps. Absolutely styling and love it all!
Cheers
Becs
Posted by: Rebecca | 19 August 2011 at 08:28 AM
How much would you recommend to set aside in order to throw a party such as this? Including food, decs, party favours etc? Planning ahead for our parties next year.
Posted by: Lyndall | 19 August 2011 at 01:51 PM
Stunning colour scheme and what a beautiful birthday High Tea. Funnily enough I saw glimpses of this party this morning on Amy Atlas's Facebook page.
Posted by: Janine | 19 August 2011 at 03:16 PM
What a delightful treat it must have been for your daughter.
Posted by: Julie Short | 19 August 2011 at 03:26 PM
Absolutely gorgeous! So much attention to detail. Fabulous!
Posted by: Peony and Thistle | 22 August 2011 at 05:36 PM