adventures with ava elise: Katie's Mad Hatter Baby Shower

Katie and I have been best friends since we were five and six years old, respectively. She's like family to me. She knows I would do anything for her. And hosting her baby shower just four weeks after giving birth myself is one of those things that I wouldn't hesitate to do for her; actually, if given the chance to do it again, I would jump at it.

Inspired by this shower, I wanted the party to look sophisticated and not like a little girl's birthday party.

I have a very long dining room where we put several tables together set with mismatched antique tea cups and saucers to give it an eclectic Mad Hatter vibe. We also filled several mismatched tea pots with red-tipped roses (for a "painting the roses red" look) and scattered playing cards around on the tabletops.
We used a fancy chess set as a serving tray where we put decanters with "Shrink" and "Grow" tags attached with ribbon to look like the potions Alice drank before entering Wonderland. I tied ribbon around wine glasses with "Drink Me" tags. Megan created the most elegant tea menu with sweet and savory scones, tea sandwiches, shortbread, mini cupcakes (with "Eat Me" tags), and lots more mouth-watering delectables. We created a candy buffet using the same apothecary jars and candy bags we had for my family shower and we also had purple and pink swirl lollipops which reminded me of the Cheshire cat. Katie's aunt made name tags for everyone out of playing cards with their names spelled backwards ("contrariwise").