While I worked on this -- I am painting our lower kitchen cabinets in chalkboard paint -- Vivi sat quietly at the dining room table with her watercolours. I heard nothing but the clinky-clanky-swish-swish-swish of her paintbrush being dipped in the mug of water, presumably to clean it between colours, just as I had spent a great deal of time demonstrating to her. And then I got up to check supper in the kitchen.
Oh well, at least it wasn't as bad as this.
Me, with my shadow. And my other shadow, and her shadow.
(By the way, we bought these personalized invitations from Lisa Kay on Etsy. I love how Sylvie's face appears on the little flower in the corner of the invitation and on a set of stickers we used on the favours and on her thank y0u notes.)
We found Vivi's Indian tea party dress for ten bucks at Kinder Klozet, a local children's consignment shop. The owner Lyn's good friend is from India and her father sends his granddaughter TEN fancy Indian dresses every Christmas. The tags were still on this one.
We were going to have her dress as Alice in Wonderland and I had a special blue full tutu skirt made for the occasion, as well as an apron just like Alice's, but Vivi took a dislike to the expanse of the skirt. (The outfit probably cost $100 in total and she preferred the $10 one -- take note, other mothers with Ideas.) I'll try to get a photo of her in it later, when she's up to it. She even has a pair of white gloves to go with it.
Mama really loves the cake, which was made by the lovely and talented Yumi of Sweetie Pie Cupcake Boutique. Yumi also made us a dozen chocolate cupcakes, half topped by white roses, half by red, in honour of the Red Queen, of course.
Vivi really loves the cake, too. That's Chelsea, apparently Barbie's daughter, who is holding a rabbit on the top of the cake and playing the role of Alice. We had a blast. Tons of pictures to come.
So Sylvie's having a vaguely Alice in Wonderland themed tea party for her third birthday this week, and I have been having a lot of fun planning it. Perhaps too much fun. One of the things I was most excited about was making (or ideally, having someone else make) this pink cake iced with roses (found here). I just showed Vivi the photo and she smiled and said she liked it but that she wanted a Barbie cake. Horrors. First of all just ugh and secondly I am not a big fan of Barbies. But it is her birthday, after all, not my own personal fantasy extravaganza tea party day. Do you think I could get away with cramming a Barbie doll into the top of that thing?
