Tea Party

The following picture probably says it all. We all tried our best to dress up our blue jean ensembles with jewelry, scarves, hats and boas. Some were more outlandish than others. We all walked up the hill to my friends house where we held the tea party. Wade said we looked somewhere between people heading to a soup kitchen or going to Mardi Gras. It was a delightful afternoon with friends and family. It was the first tea party for many of my guests but they have decided that it won't be their last. My company left on the train back to Oklahoma and Minnesota yesterday evening and I have spent the day putting my house back in some order and doing PILES of laundry.

Dalton was the only male at the tea party but as you can see in this picture with his mother he also had on a party hat.

Our menu consisted of tea sandwiches in heart shapes of chicken salad, egg salad, cream cheese with marmalade on several different types of bread, mixed green salad inside of pita pockets, 3 types of scones, biscotti, heart shaped sugar cookies, a french cream cake and a chocolate delight cake. My friend Patty demonstrated the proper way to make and serve a pot of loose leaf tea as I prepared another type of tea in the kitchen. I had also placed one of my flowering teas in my clear glass tea pot so that the guests could watch it bloom as it brewed. Another friend had supplied each of us with a different china cup and saucer from a family collection. After we had eaten, I read a story about how tea parties first began and then we each shared a story. Some stories were true stories and some were fantasies. We ended the afternoon by giving each guest a gift bag containing a candle made by my friends husband, a knitted dish cloth made by my sister, a necklace made by me, a flowering tea and a heart shaped chocolate. A good deal of work went into the planning and preparation but I think it was worth the effort. LaDonna