MMP - Tea Party: The Cups and Saucers

I am so excited for a full week of tea parties!!!!

If you are coming here from the Make Mine Pink blog, WELCOME! I hope you will enjoy tea with me! :)

I am not sure what the others are doing, but being a mom of three little girls (and one boy who I am sure will get dragged into tea parties and dress-up by his sisters despite his protest), I am taking a different approach to the tea party. I hope you will indulge me.

I want to share ways to have fun tea parties with your children, teaching them grace and responsibility, without breaking the bank! :)

First, you need to have the tea set! :)

I used to buy all the plastic tea party sets. And while those are cute and fine, I really started feeling like I wanted MORE for my daughters. The plastic tea sets were played with a lot at first, but even with my encouragement, the tea parties waned and I found myself looking for something more. Especially after reading this article about teaching responsibility using a real tea set.

What better way to train up your daughter to have a proper tea party than with a proper tea set?! :)

Now I am not saying to go out and buy a tea set. That would be way too expensive. And who says that it all has to match perfectly? A friend of my mother's has a different cup and saucer for each guest at her table. Having tea with her was so fun! There was a story behind each place setting! It was so fun to hear the stories behind each tea cup as we drank tea!

So what I have started doing is shopping for tea cups and saucers with my girls. They are only 7yr, 5yr and 4 yr, but it is so FUN to see them get so excited about tea cups! We mostly shop garage sales, thrift stores and recently I started taking my oldest to the antique stores. I can just imagine a few years from now, all us girls sitting around the table drinking tea and talking about how much fun we had buying such and such cup at the antique store! :)

I know that it is also scary to allow your children to hold REAL cups and saucers (compared to plastic), but I cannot tell you the pride and joy they have on their face as they accomplish holding and having tea like a Mommy!! And they are being trained to be responsible young ladies.

So even if you do not have a tea set passed down to you from your grandma, or an expensive set you bought, remember you can still have a very beautiful (though very shabby chic) tea set one cup and saucer at a time. :)

Tomorrow: Teaching Our Daughters Hospitali-TEA! :)