Birthday Tea Party

It seems like only yesterday that I had a birthday. Probably because it was only yesterday...

But before that: A couple weeks ago I arrived at the movie theater earlier than my friends and I had scheduled, so I wandered around the shops nearby. One of them is Clay 'N' Latte, where you can go to paint ceramics with your friends, and they had pink flyers announcing their Mother-Daughter Tea Party special event, which just happened to be on my birthday.

The party consisted of mother and daughter painting a little tea set while drinking tea and eating scones and other tea-compatible delights. When I told my daughter about it, she loved the idea as much as I did. This is the set they had on display to show us how cute it could be.


We were assigned to a small table at the front window, and our blank tea set was waiting.


The first order of business was to wipe each piece down with a damp sponge.


Next was choosing paint colors. The paints look different from the way they'll be on the finished product, so you have to go according to the finished samples on the yellow wall. Each color shows what it looks like with one, two, or three coats.


We decided to make our set look like the sample, because it was so adorable, so the girl prepared our base colors and we were set. Of course, we got some tea and goodies to fortify ourselves for the task.


These are the purple items with three coats of the base color. The white parts still needed the darker contrast color.


The party was scheduled for two hours, but we took a lot longer. Our conversation was punctuated by "Oops" quite a bit, followed by either grabbing a paper towel to wipe off the messed up spot or by painting over the splotch if it wasn't too far out of the lines.

We had planned on meeting my son for lunch, but our lunch time came and went while we painted multiple coats, so my son came to sit with us while we finished. It was great just hanging out over paintbrushes and dot-making bottles.

And here's the final product of the day.


They'll be firing everyone's tea sets during the week, and we'll be able to pick them up next weekend, just in time for Mother's Day.

It was a great start to a wonderful birthday.