Making Wonderland: Part 3

The Queen of Hearts' Court
After the salad we left the Wonderland Garden and moved upstairs to the church's lobby-fellowship hall for the main course -fondue. This was my least favourite space for these reasons:

1. The space was very large so even with our decorations it seemed undecorated.
   
2. The ceiling is high (and I'm short) so we didn't hang anything.
   
3. I couldn't find all of the props I wanted so we had to improvise and the substitutions just weren't the same.
   
4. We ran out of time setting up and this was the room that it was more noticeable. Somethings were left incomplete.
   

It still came together but it was less than I had originally envisioned and that made me sad. For the meal we had two fondue pots (both electric which I found to be easier and safer to work compared to other styles). One pot had Swiss cheese the other broth. We had trays of breads, veggies, and lunch meats to dip in two either pot. I liked the meal but not everyone did. The tastes were new and strange for some and not "youth-like". I need to remember not everyone is adventurous with food when planning next year's banquet menu.

The Queen of Hearts' Court's Decorations
We had made "card" sandwich boards for the servers to wear but when the meal was changed to self serve we didn't need waiters. The servers would have looked cute as cards. We did have five heart trees with white roses in various stages of being "painted red." I liked the idea, but you'll notice the trees lacked trunks. It's one of those details that got dropped when time ran out. I would also have liked to add more flowers but that didn't happen either.I did like how the tables turned out. We used red tablecloths, white napkins, and red plates, very fitting for the Red Queens court. I also liked the "painting the roses red" center pieces:
The Queen of Hearts' Court's Games
The first game was "Queen of Hearts Says" which is Simon Says with a different title. I was slightly surprised how well the game turned out. I wasn't expecting the group to really play but they did and that made it fun. The second game was indoor flamingo croquet:
I couldn't find real croquet mallets or even plastic flamingos in my area. I did find the items on Amazon but the plans were right in the middle of the postal strike and would never have arrived on time. We made the "cards" out of half sheets of poster board. The flamingo mallets were made out of pool noodles with post board flamingos hot glued together. It wasn't ideal but it worked and it was fun. If we were to play this again I would rethink how to make the cards stay up. They flopped over. I think I would also buy a real croquet set and paint the mallets into flamingos like this:
Or like this:
I found both those ideas reading Yvonne Byatt's Family Fun blog post "Alice in Wonderland/Mad Hatter Tea Party"

After all the fun we headed back down for the last course and my favourite room! The details will be up tomorrow till then:

I ate from the "tall" side of the mushroom...see I'm tall for once.