Party Planning Center

My Alice in Wonderland themed birthday party is coming up on the 16th…well maybe. The RSVPs are coming in slow which is making me nervous. I’ve only invited the six ladies in my Gathering Girls group so if too many have other plans, I’ll have gone through a lot of planning, shopping and worrying all for naught. Of course, I admit to overdoing the shopping portion---note I didn’t say buying portion. It’s overwhelming how much party stuff is actually available for theme parties but when I added up all the stuff I wanted to buy it didn’t make sense to spend so much for such a small party. Shopping was still fun while it lasted and it kept me occupied on a lot of snowy afternoons.

 I did buy tiny glass bottles and tags to hold the potion Alice drank that made her grow smaller. Don’t tell anyone but they’ll be holding pink lemonade. I also bought a package of keys for the hallway of locked doors that Alice faced and when I was doing my homework on why keys were featured on all the party websites I realized I’ve dreamed about that hallway of locked doors often in my life. It’s one of my reoccurring dreams. I attached a key to each save-the-date card and hand delivered most of them at our 3rd Mondays Brunch in March but the ones I had to mail cost $3.50 each. I had ‘sticker shock’ at the post office!

I also bought a deck of cards with cool vintage pictures from the pages of the Alice book. I’ll show you a photo after the party of how I’m using the cards in my centerpiece. In my head the old florist in me designed a dozen centerpieces but I’m ending up with something very campy but simple. I’ll give you one clue: it includes a layer cake from my old dollhouse. That tiny handmade cake cost a fortune back in the day as did the miniature handmade rabbit I’m using from another past collection. Oops, that’s one more clue than I planned on giving. Playing with those old “toys for grownup” made me realize how much fine finger function I’ve lost. Color me sad about that. 

I bought a few other minor décor type things but I’m most proud of coming up with an activity of sorts that didn’t cost me anything but some time putting it together. I made seven tiny scrolls with ‘read me’ tags and each one is a life lesson the Alice in Wonderland book taught us. We can read and discuss them or just consider them part of the décor if we don’t need conversation starters. For example, one of the life lessons is to always follow the white rabbit which the scroll goes on to explain simply means that it’s okay to be curious and even impulsive. If inventors weren’t curious and followed their impulses the world would have missed out on some wonderful things. We each have our own white rabbit in life that can lead us to interesting places. Another life lesson the Alice in Wonderland book taught us is that wandering doesn’t mean we’re lost. There is more than one way to get to our life goals and sometimes if we think we’ve strayed from pursuing those goals it just means we had things we had to learn along the way to our destinations. Like I said, I’ve been having fun thinking up party ideas and dismissing most of them, looking at recipes and menus and settling on simple choices that fit my skill level or lack thereof in the kitchen.

I’ve run into a few snags in my party planning, though. 1) I discovered that with the extra leaf in my table the tablecloth that matches my dishes doesn’t fit; 2) the vast internet doesn’t seem to sell moss green table clothes at a reasonable price; 3) I forgot I downsized my dishes last year and I only have place settings for six now and we are a group of seven; 4) I gave away a 3-tiered party server I could have used to save space and add height to the visual look of my table; 5) ditto on giving away my 8-cup coffee pot; 6) my housecleaning service called to push my cleaning too close to party day for my comfort; 7) because of the cleaning delay I had to reschedule the carpet cleaning service; 8) the weather is preventing my lawn care service from doing a spring cleanup (but I can’t control Mother Nature so I’ve crossed that off my worry list.)

And number nine of that snags that happened to my party planning is the biggest: when I started talking to the Gathering Girls about me having a party I wanted to do it in the middle of the afternoon with just beverages and desserts but I had to change the time to noon because one of the ladies takes care of her grandkids starting at 2:00. Therefore I’m doing more food preparation than I’m comfortable doing. But with my handy lists and battle plan it will all turn out okay and if it doesn’t it will just get chalked up to, “That’s Jean for you, the anti-foodie!” ©