Tea Party Games :: A Cupcake Jigsaw Puzzle Race!
You all know that my family loves puzzles, right? So of course I had to find a way to tie them into Our Little Flowers Girl’s Club Mother-Daughter Tea Party this year! 😉 When a friend of mine mentioned some small “Cupcake” games & puzzles she had seen at Barnes & Noble they sounded perfect!
I ended up purchasing a 4 pack of 60 Piece Puzzles and two 100 piece puzzles, since I couldn’t decide whether to break the group into 3-4 teams or 2 teams, for a “Cupcake Puzzle Race.” When I gave the girls the option, they all wanted to go with Mothers versus Daughters! I gave them first pick of the two 100 piece puzzles and they choose the white cupcake with the pink flower on top.
*Only a couple of the puzzles are currently available on Barnes & Noble online, and Amazon doesn’t seem to have these particular cupcake puzzles either, but they do have a few other options. I especially love these little Nature Puzzles.
I put the moms at our
{this moment}
Tea Party Games :: She Loves It… She Loves It Not!
When I was brainstorming ideas for this year’s Mother-Daughter Tea Party, I thought it would be fun to revisit one of the games from our very first Little Flowers Tea Party now that the girls are all older! This ended up being the first game we played after everyone had arrived, while the servers filled the trays for our first course.
Directions:
All you need is a daisy, or any other flower with lots of petals. The first player plucks off a petal as she shares something that her mother or daughter loves. The next player shares something her mother or daughter loves — not! The flower continues around the circle with mothers talking about their daughters, and daughters talking about their mothers, until the flower runs out of petals.
Apparently I love taking pictures, flowers, my girls, and children… And I do not love messy bedrooms, “us fighting”, and dirty floors. Sounds about right! 😉
{pretty, happy, funny, real}
Yesterday morning my husband was sent on an out-of-state fire assignment! He will be working as a Radio Operator this time, which should keep him out of hazardous working conditions. It will be a tough couple weeks (if they keep him for the full 14 days) for both of us, but we are so very grateful for the extra work and overtime! I’m just praying life doesn’t get even half as crazy as it did the last time he was out of town! 😉
{pretty}
At our last Little Flowers meeting the girls all made Spiritual Bouquet cards to give to their mothers during our tea party. While I was setting the table I happened to notice Chiquita’s (age 7) card and her little list of prayers she had been offering, without any reminders on my part to complete the assignment. It made me so happy to see that my she (actually both my girls!) had been praying for me! Both cards are such a treasure!
I really don’t like it when my kitchen counters are covered with stuff! I usually avoid (for the most part) taking any pictures of these messes, which happen especially when I am trying to do too many things at once. Last Friday night was definitely one of those times… Groceries and mail still needed to be put away, flowers needed to be arranged, various items all over the place to set the table, remnants of my cake decorating, and half decorated pretzel rods, and more… Thankfully it didn’t take too long to clean up and looked beautiful in the morning!
Our Little Flowers Girls’ Club Mother-Daughter Tea Party
This past Saturday I hosted our annual Little Flowers Girls’ Club Mother-Daughter Tea Party following our completion of Wreath IV. I’ll admit that, after an extra busy back-to-school week, I was pretty overwhelmed after Mass Friday morning just thinking about everything that still needed to be done, but it all came together beautifully!
One of my dear friends invited my boys over for the afternoon, so that my husband and I could pick up flowers and all the other last minute things I needed from town. She also loaned me some gloves and a pretty hat to wear, along with her tub of extra hats and gloves for anyone else that wasn’t able to find some for the party. Another friend went home and polished her beautiful silver tea set for us to borrow, since I wasn’t able to find one at any of the local thrift stores or even the department stores!
Thankfully I had also saved all the decorations from last year’s Tea Themed Birthday Party, and I even was able to use that pretty pink Birthday Banner since we scheduled our tea for September 8th, the feast of the Nativity of Mary!
As always, I assigned each of the Little Flowers a menu item to bring for our Three-Course Tea. In between each course I planned games for all the Mothers & Daughters to play, while we gave the servers (a couple of the girls’ older sisters) time to refill the tiered platters. I’ll post about all of this year’s party games later… In the meantime here are some pictures from the Tea!
Red Rose Tea served with Cream and Sugar
Cucumber Sandwiches with Goat Cheese & Bacon
Pillow Mints &
Wreath IV Gemstones
(aka Jolly Ranchers – and my creative husband gets the credit for this idea!)
~ Party Favors ~
As much as I am ready for a break, I think I am really going to miss leading Little Flowers this coming year! My girls will be moving on to the Little Women Hospitality Program, though we do plan to continue having an annual Mother-Daughter Tea Party! I need to try and enjoy the break, since it won’t be long before our little Rose is ready to learn more about the various Virtues and work her way through the four Wreaths of Little Flowers!
Celebrating Our Lady’s Birthday {and a 2000th Post Giveaway!}
Before I move on to sharing some pictures from Our Little Flowers Mother-Daughter Tea Party, I thought I’d post a few pictures from our family celebration in honor of the Blessed Mother’s birthday this past Saturday.
Originally I had intended to serve the birthday cake during our tea, but we ended up with so many delicious foods and desserts that everyone just couldn’t eat one more thing and I decided to save it for my kids. The boys and our little Rose were especially excited to not be left out of all the fun!
Speaking of celebrating, I also just noticed that this is my 2000th post! Isn’t that crazy? I remember getting excited when I made it to 100! I started this little blog just over 5 years ago, right before Snuggles was born. At that time I had no idea how much this little space would bless our family with friendships, prayers, support, and (most unexpectedly) even financially (thank you to all of you that purchase through my affiliate links). Blogging has helped keep me sane and is actual proof that I really do get things done around here, despite what it feels like most of the time! 😉 God sure does provide for all of our needs!
Taking a look at the Shower of Roses stats I am so amazed that there are 1230 of you currently following though feeds and the blog is quickly approaching 1,000,000 unique visits with over 2,000,000 page views since 2007!
With the feast of St. Therese coming up at the beginning of next month, I thought this would be the perfect time to host another giveaway! I’ve put together a St. Therese Gift Package (*basket not included) for one of my visitors. The package will include:
- A lovely St. Therese “Living the Little Way” Apron donated by Catholic Embroidery (Now is the perfect time to start ordering aprons or other beautiful embroidered products as Christmas gifts! Catholic Embroidery now also has a blog and Facebook page, so be sure to check those out as well)
- Rose Covered Journal
- Rose Notecards
- A Set of Rose shaped votive candles
- A pretty little wall plaque of St. Therese
- 1 bar of Cinnamon Nutmeg Soap and 1 bar of Honey Almond Soap (not pictured) donated by Three Little Maidens Soap Company (These would also make great gifts!)
Update: For those of you that are not seeing your comments, all you need to do is click the “Load More…” link at the end of the first page of comments. I, too, had a hard time figuring out where they were disappearing to, but apparently Blogger has a limit on how many comments will show on the first page. This was the first time you all have ever even come close to exceeding that limit!
A Votive Mass for Our Lady
This past Friday we were so very blessed with a Latin Votive Mass for Our Lady! It was the first time Father Carmelo (a retired priest in our area) has agreed to offer Mass in Latin for us. It wasn’t the extraordinary form, but still so very beautiful and (as a friend mentioned) we must celebrate these small victories in our liberal diocese.
The little historic church, which usually just has our family and a handful of other people attending on Fridays, was packed on this particular weekday morning during the first week of school. We also had the lovely local Schola Choir singing in the loft. Who says that there isn’t enough interest in Latin Masses around here?!
Following Mass, the Legion of Mary invited us to stay for a little reception. It was such a beautiful and joy filled morning! We are hoping that Father will agree to offer Mass in Latin more often… Perhaps for our annual All Souls Mass this year?!? 🙂
I spent the rest of Friday preparing for our Mother/Daughter Tea Party on Saturday, which was so much fun! I have tons of pictures to share with you all, but they will have to wait… My online time is extra limited at the moment, while we work on establishing some good routines for our new school year. I’ll be back soon!
Tea Time
I let the girls stay up late and keep me company last night, as I worked on getting ready for our Mother/Daughter Tea Party today in honor of Our Blessed Mother’s Birthday! They were so cute to watch playing together at the counter while I decorated our cake. I just posted the cake recipe over at Catholic Cuisine. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
{pretty, happy, funny, real}
{pretty}
The kids are all very happy with their science journals this year (the original journal for the boys and the junior journal for the girl) and super excited to be studying Swimming Creatures. I just ordered this Sea Life Alphabet Coloring Book to add to the Alphabet Path for Snuggles, which he can color while he sits in on his older siblings science (we read the text aloud all together) and participates in the extra activities!
Have I mentioned yet that our little Bud frequently sleeps with his eyes open? So strange! It’s like he’s watching me to make sure that I don’t try and set him down or leave the room… I’ve read that most babies will outgrow this by 12-18 months. I sure hope so!
The Big Day
After:
Time for me to go mop the floors… They just somehow looked clean in that video from the other day! We’ve decided to cut back on the cleaning lady to (partially) help with all the extra dental expenses… (I’m sure I looked like Snuggles when we added up all the charges!) I am sure going to miss having her help, even if she was only coming six hours a month! Still, it will all be worth it, and it’s such a blessing to be able to do this for our children. God is good!
0 Comments