Everyone likes to play “dress-up”. Invite your friends to a tea party where each guest wears an outrageous or funny hat that she bought or made herself. You can find unusual ones at used clothing stores or garage sales.
For the invitation, decorate tiny straw hats with ribbon and silk flowers. Write the party information on a pretty note card. Attach to the hat with ribbon. Place the invitation inside a small hatbox or gift bag lined with colorful tissue. Don’t forget to tell your guests to wear their wild and crazy hats. Mail in a box or hand-deliver the invitations.
Create an arrangement of pretty, decorated hats for your tea table centerpiece. You can go really wild with your party color choices for tablecloth, napkins and china for this event—the brighter the better.
Use decorated hatboxes to serve some of your teatime treats, such as scones or tea sandwiches. Menu choices might include Mini Zucchini and Cheese Quiches (recipe on this blog), Roast Beef & Cream Cheese Tea Sandwiches (page 40) and Cucumbers with Shrimp Salad (page 50). For sweets try mini Apple Scones (recipe on this blog) with Brown Sugar & Cinnamon Butter (recipe on this blog) and Mini Cheesecakes topped with cherry pie filling (page 54).
Have a fashion show where each guest models her hat on a runway. Award each guest a “prize” for her hat (funniest, most colorful, largest, smallest, most creative, etc.). Take lots of pictures of your guests wearing their fabulous hats or videotape the event and show it during the last half-hour of the party.
Make special “hat” cookies for favors by using a cookie cutter to cut out 3” and 1-1/2” circles from sugar cookie dough, rolled out to about 1/4” thick. Bake the cookies as directed for your recipe (you can use prepared cookie dough if you like). Glue one 1-1/2” cookie to the center of one 3” cookie using icing. Decorate the cookies with colorful icing “ribbons” and “flowers”. Place each cookie in a tiny hat box and tie with satin ribbon.
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