Mad Hatter Tea Party Spoiler and all around birthday weekend

March 26th was Ashni's 7th birthday. We were lucky enough to have my older brother and his two children visiting for the weekend. We took all of the kids to Tupelo to let Ashni spend her $25 gift card. Before she actually bought anything, she felt like $25 meant she was RICH! She learned quickly that $25 in 2010 doesn't get you a whole lot. But she enjoyed being able to pick her own things to buy and she tried to be very frugal. She wouldn't even consider anything that cost more than $10. Despite her frugality, she wanted to buy her little sisters (just her little sisters, sorry Jena) gifts. So she let Bijou pick a pair of flip flops and got Zion a glitter filled bouncy ball.

This was a VERY welcomed sight coming bag from Tupelo. She does not do well without a nap (and neither do the rest of us)

Zion was trying out a new look at Old Navy. I think it works!

I mentioned before that this year's birthday party was going to be the Mad Hatter's tea party. Hopefully I will have some really great pictures to share soon (thanks Laura!) but I thought I'd share just a couple of the ones that I have. I have to say that this party was a LOT of work, but the kids had a blast. We made mad hatter paper bag hats and had an awesome scavenger hut. There were little tea sandwiches, eat me raspberry lemon cupcakes, chess men cookies and a variety of tea in a variety of tea cups (from tiny toy tea sets to cow cups with utters). A mad time was had by all.
This is the cupcake tower and birthday banner in the works. The cupcake tower was surprisingly easy. It's made with scrap cardboard that I had around the house. I used the same book pages as the invitations and trimmed it with some lace that we had in the craft cabinet. The letters for the banner are just printed off and colored with colored pencil.

The tower complete with cupcakes and Ashni's little cake on top. The little birds and sparkly candles came from the Dollar Store.

I made tissue paper pom poms and got paper lanterns from the Dollar Store.

I will post soon with the good pictures, but you get the idea...