Tea Under the Sea

Well hello cats and kittens! I apologize deeply for missing a post last week. I ended up having to help out one of my coworkers due to a family emergency. It was a great experience but boy do I think that was enough of that role for me. For those who did not notice, the last blog post had a contest included for those who want to enter. I don’t blame you for not reading to the end of that saga though if you missed it!

Well speaking of cats and kittens – Patricia has a lovey! Until recently, she has taken almost no interest in stuffed animals. One night though I left a crocheted kitty doll in her crib, and she apparently cuddled it all night and woke up talking to it. Success! Only downside? The crocheted kitty was Julius’ toy… a fact I had forgotten. Before Patricia took notice of kitty Julius never played with it, so I thought he wouldn’t care… of course I was wrong. Luckily he has mostly acquiesced and has been letting Patricia snuggle with it and carry it around.

Sleeping with Kitty

Snuggles

Patricia also loves books! A few weeks ago she started enjoying sitting in our laps and turning pages. I would say her current favorite is Moo Baa La La La by Sandra Boynton which I’ve been reading her at least twice every night before bed. She still hasn’t been talking much, but I am pretty sure she is saying the same sounds every time for Dany. It sounds more like Doodle. So maybe she’s trying to say doggy? Or perhaps she is saying one of the twenty pet names I call Dany like “Dany Doodle”. Hopefully we’ll figure that one out soon because she says it everytime she points at Dany.

Speaking of Patricia, we celebrated her first birthday with a cake smash over zoom this year. I had some pretty grand plans and the zoom call included a green screen, a bubble maker and mermaid costumes. Scroll down to see the celebration.

Theme
Patricia is my little mermaid. She just loves the water. When she was a baby just learning to stand she would squeal with delight when she heard the bath running. Then she would pull herself up the side of the tub to peer into the water. Julius is very nervous about water getting in his eyes when we wash, but Patricia will happily dump water over her own head. I had been wanting to throw a tea party themed sip-and-see when Patricia was born, but that theme apparently wasn’t weird enough for me. Instead I combined the two and decided to throw a mermaid themed tea party for my little water bug.

Invitations

I decided “Tea Under the Sea” had a cute ring to it, so I sketched out an idea and cut the invitations using my cricut. I then used adhesive tape to tape some of my favorite Harney and Sons teas to the inside and then shipped them out to my family members.

Decor

For the party I thought it would be cute if Patricia looked like she was under the sea… so I bought a bubble maker, taped green fabric to the wall and used the zoom green screen feature with a free background I found online.

I decorated Patricia’s high chair with a blue and green “one” banner I whipped together with my cricut and taped it to her high chair.

The setup

This is what it looked like to us.

This is what it looked like over zoom

Cake

I’ll be honest, I had the most fun making Patricia’s tiny smash cake. I baked it in ramekin dishes with some of Julius’ cake batter dyed blue, and then froze it. And I froze Julius’ leftover birthday cake frosting to frost the tiny cake and cupcakes and I had just enough. Patricia ate the cake extremely daintily, there was no smashing involved. After I took the cake away, I brought a banana in the room and she got extremely excited for that. At least she got what she wanted for her birthday.

Patricia’s tiny smash cake – cupcakes for scale

Patricia daintily tests the cake.

Costumes

A Lexi party wouldn’t be complete without costumes. At first I was going to make all 4 of us mer-people tails, but I realized that we wouldn’t be able to fit anyone but Patricia in the zoom shot. Instead I made Julius and Patricia tails. Patricia’s was blue/green and Julius’s tail was yellow by request. Patricia used to ask to wear her tail everytime she would spot it hanging up, though I’ve since moved it to the costume closet in the basement.