I was over the moon excited as I dreamt up each magical detail of this party, for my daughter Juliet. Since the sneak peak trailer of the new Mary Poppins release was announced last year , a tiny spark of a dream was birthed in me as I imagined the realms one could go to with this gorgeous theme! We saw the new Mary Poppins in the Christmas holidays and thereafter bought and watched the original with glee, I found it so, so magical with all its little details and songs and characters, and also started reading the original Mary Poppins books by P.L Travers. We were fully into the Mary Poppins swing and a practically perfect party was on its way!!
Since teatime is such a special event in the original Mary Poppins, I decided to make the party purely a teatime treat for girls and their moms, to come to “Cherry Tree Lane” for tea and a spoonful of sugar! I wanted to make this event as much as a treat for moms as it was for their daughters, Juliet’s special little friends! I thus designed a “Mommy Poppins” champagne and refreshment station, and moms received beautiful tea mugs and boxes of tea to take home, aswell as tea towel favours which had various Mary Poppins quotes printed on them, while sipping on penguin lemonade, waters and champagne that promised to turn “Cruella de Ville into Mary Poppins”, something us moms know all about!
As the little girls arrived, they were adorned with a Mary Poppins hat and were given a Mary Poppins Supercalifragilisticexpialodocious tote bag to fill with goodies throughout their morning! The girls started with a chalkboard craft, on special chalkboards which were cut into kite shapes and painted with chalkboard paint. Chalk paintings are a huge part of the original Mary Poppins, as Bert draws many a picture in chalk on the sidewalk. By this stage the girls had also received their party packs, boxes designed to look like the Banks’ residence on Cherry Tree Lane! Attached to their party pack, was a bag of tokens that they could redeem for prizes at the Prize Board, starting with the winner of the chalk- drawing competition! I realised I had far too many prizes, so each girl was a winner and could redeem a token for a prize! This Prize board was a hit! The prize board, carnival candy cart containing sweeties and sweetie bags, popcorn, toffee apples and candy floss, aswell as the carousel I rented for the girls to ride on (it remained in the front yard as it could not fit through my front door!!!) all tied in with the carnival and carousel fair Mary Poppins took Michael and Jane Banks to in the the original movie! Then there were felt carousel horses which were meant to be raced, we ran out of time, but the girls luckily got to choose a horse to take home!
Then onto the real treat, the high tea, to be had at a beautiful table under balloon clouds and a sky of umbrellas, with Mary Poppins soundtrack playing in the background! The girls just loved this! The table was adorned with savouries, from Mary Poppins’ cheese umbrellas to Admiral Boon’s sausage canons, Katie Nana’s stuffed eggs and much more! Girls had their own sparkling grape juice in plastic champagne glasses, and had an assortment of teas in real tea pots with real cups and saucers, adorned with pretty sugar cubes and the girls just loved helping themselves (with help of mom, of course!).
After their tea, I took the girls into the garden for another game which we called “Reaching for the Stars”, this being a major theme running through the Mary Poppins books and movie. We tied star biscuits on a string strung from two trees, and the girls, hands behind their backs, had to get their star cookie off the rope and bite it! Winner again to redeem some loot at the prize board! Then the girls rolled up their pretty sleeves and put their muscles to work in bashing away at a carousl-horse piñata! Always a winner!!
Throughout the party, moms and daughters could still eat lots of spoonfulls of sugar from the dessert tables, richly adorned with carrot cake, chocolate cake, donut towers, macaroons, butter biscuits, rice crispy kites, spoonsful of sugar cake pops and penguin cake pops too blinkin CUTE to eat, cherry cakepops, sky and cloud puddings (so darling!) and choc-covered oreos!! Needless to say everyone received a ‘cake-away’ box to fill and take home! The girls had to make sure they had all their special prezzies before leaving: their felt stick horses, cutesy little penguins, felt cherry keyrings, penguin felt masks, little bottles of bubblebath, pretty sheets of Mary Poppins stickers, carousel horse marshmallow jars, little kite hair clips, pretty bookmarks, colouring in books, cherry lip balm, homemade bracelets in party colours with spoon,handbag and umbrella charm attached, bird whistles (feed the birds, tuppence a bag), spit-spot sewing kits and of course………..KITES and UMBRELLAS to take home! I had hoped we would have had time for the girls to take their kites to the park and fly them and get some beautiful photos, but we ran out of time!
A very important décor element which I just had to bring into the party, was my daughter, Juliet’s silhouette (in the original Mary Poppins movie Bert draws Mary Poppins silhouette in chalk. So through a process we got Juliet’s silhouette drawn and if you look carefully, her actual silhouette is on the pringles wrappers, cupcake toppers, sweetie bags and cotton candy bags!! A truly special detail I’d say!
But eventually the winds changed, and we all know Mary Poppins only stays until the wind changes, so off she went , but I think it’s safe to say that all the moms and their daughters had a truly jolly holiday with Juliet!
