Friday, November 21, 2014

Mommy Daughter Date: Tea for Two



I've mentioned Reagan's behavior chart that keeps those terrible tantrums at bay (mostly), and I promise I'm posting on that soon. Basically I let her pick rewards within reason, and on one of her latest picks included a tea party for the two of us. We had so much fun, I just had to share!

Full disclosure... I had totally planned on cleaning the front porch (her play area) so these pictures would be "perfect" but life had other plans for me. I recently posted about how much my shoulder had been hurting and how it was making everything harder... well I may have a torn rotator cuff! Don't ask me how I managed this, I have NO CLUE!! But a tea party was planned for this day, so a tea party was going to happen! After all, Reagan had earned it, and I needed some one on one time with my little.

Another thing to note is that I didn't make any of these treats! I went to the store the night before, after finding out this news about my arm, and decided I would buy everything to make it easier on myself, rather than baking it all like I had originally planned.

Mamas - you are busy and stressed and want to do it all. I want you to know that spending time with your children, even with a messy play room and heat and eat treats is STILL A VICTORY!

And you know what? It's still fun! I love to plan and photograph things for my blog and instagram. I love to make it pretty and share it and for a brief minute look like Super Mom on the outside. But doing that all the time? Especially when I'm hurt? It's exhausting, and it's too much. So let me be the first to tell you, a fancy tea party that completely thrills your little girl is easy and really doesn't take much work at all! You can even do it with a gimpy arm and still receive hundreds of thank you's and accolades from your three year old ;)

So here's how I pulled off this super doable "fancy pants" tea party:

First, I made a trip to Walmart. That's how all great things start, right? A trip to Walmart or Target? Haha. So I scouted out mini foods, because tiny foods are cute and perfect tea party material. Here's what I came up with: lots of frozen things. I found frozen dark chocolate covered banana slices and strawberry slices, macaroons, and mini eclairs. For the actual food I got mini quiche and crab rangoon. 

Reagan helped with the prep...


aka ate the crumbs from the macaroon package ;)


So we laid out all the desserts on our fanciest platters. All they had to do was thaw! Easy peasy!




A little advice on the chocolate covered bananas... The package says to thaw them for 5 minutes before serving. It was well over that long before we got to the dessert course and they were mushy and slimy inside. The strawberries did not have this problem. I would suggest taking the bananas out just before serving instead. Reagan loves bananas though, and she thought they were divine :)

The rangoon and quiche just needed to be popped in the oven for a few minutes, so that was easy! For the tea, I just used some decaf English tea. Ours is called "Yorkshire Gold" and it's delicious. Earl Grey or any similar tea is good too. I wanted to make sure it would go well with cream so we could use the whole tea set!

So I brewed the tea, got out our very best china and gold cutlery (saved for special occasions like Christmas and Thanksgiving) and I set Reagan's play table for our tea party. We also used her other table for our makeshift buffet. Don't forget your linen table clothes ;) 


Reagan invited baby Rapunzel to join us too.



And her Poppop (great grandpa) stopped by for a bit :)






You can kind of see in the next one how she was trying to be fancy and use her "tea manners" haha! Oh she just melts my heart!





We had a wonderful time pouring tea, practicing our manners, being fancy ladies, and enjoying our treats. The best part? The conversation and the bonding. I'm a firm believer in "dating" our children and I so very much enjoy the quality time we get together from this. It doesn't have to be expensive or even involve leaving the house. I just plan these special dates for us, put away my phone (except for capturing a bit of the moment) and connect with her. Little ones have some very interesting things to say when we're willing to listen! 

I hope y'all have as much fun with your fancy tea parties as we did!! I'll definitely be sharing more of our mommy daughter dates in the future! Let me know if there is anything else you'd like to see and tell me how yours goes!

xoxo,

Katie

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