This is a blast from the past.  My little sister will be graduating high school in just a few weeks, and we are in the process of planning her graduation party.  It will be totally unlike mine - late at night with a DJ (Scott Avery for those of you in the Clemson area), moon bounces, and blacklights.  However, it made me think of my graduation tea party, which was a sundress occasion in the afternoon with girls and their mothers, and how I wish I had documented it better.

Photography clearly wasn't my thing back then.  Not to mention, we were still getting everything ready when the first guests arrived.  Luckily, they were close friends of my mother's, so they just went to the kitchen and got to work!  I remember photographing things with my point-and-shoot Nikon digital camera because I didn't know where my dad's DSLR Canon was.  Finally, my dad emerged with his DSLR and took "detail" pictures.  I wish we would've taken more pictures... better pictures!

I created the invitations to appear like the tea cups from Magic Kingdom's Mad Tea Party.  This was my own idea, and they were very well-crafted.  Luckily, I still have one invitation today, so I was able to go back and take a few pictures with it.

To make the invitation, I found an image of a tea cup online, and printed that out to create a stencil.  I used textured scrapbook paper in pastel colors.  I printed out the information on the back of the teacup.  Then I cut the tea cup designs through the front color using an exacto knife (which now, in architecture school, is my best friend), gluing the printed piece to the back of the tea cup, filling the void.  So, to say that simply (or not?), instead of creating the squiggles with additive pieces of the secondary color, the squiggles are subtractive of the primary color.

I wish I would've taken pictures of the process, but here are my final invites:





Thank goodness for Photoshop - the original image from two years ago had a terrible yellow color cast.









I wish we would've gotten more (and better!) pictures of this room.



The candy bar was almost a disaster - we had ordered pink and yellow candies online, but somehow they messed up our address and shipped them to the wrong house, then they were sent back to the company. So we had to run to all over town to get whatever pink and yellow candies we could find.












The upstairs, we had snack foods and cake.



And three areas set up for dining (though we only needed two).




















































I really love putting a lot of detail into events. It means a lot to me. However, I don't think most guests really care. That's the annoying thing - to put a lot of preparation into something, only to find that your party guests have little appreciation for your efforts. But I guess if it makes me happy, that's all that really matters.