Instead of answering this question for you myself, I approached a fellow tea blogger, Angela McRae at Tea with Friends. As a regular reader of her blog, I know Angela finds many tea treasures through eBay. I wanted to learn more about how she does it and believed it would benefit you, my readers, as well.
In this 30-minute interview, I asked Angela questions you will want to hear her answers to including:
Her top three pieces of advice for someone wanting to start a tea party collection through eBay.
How Angela searches eBay with a time-saving tip.
How she gained an item for $9 worth $325 even though she lost an auction.
Click on the arrow and adjust your computer’s volume to listen:
I thoroughly enjoyed “meeting” Angela and getting to know her a bit. As a Californian, I relished connecting with a true Southern girl. Thanks, Angela!
Do you use eBay to gather items for your collection? Would you like to? Be sure to share your comments with us.
Linda (no url), recently left me the following question:
I hope you will answer this message and help me!
My daughters are hosting a baby shower tea party for their sister in May. I want to know the best and most appropriate way to set a buffet table for 20 people. I have teacups for each guest and assorted teapots. There is a formal dining room table and a server in the room that can be set-up. This sounded like such a pretty way to honor my daughter and her baby girl….I am now regretting the decision as I want it to be etiquettly (sic) as correct as possible.
I hope you can help me or direct me!
Thank you.
It’s such a good question and I quickly wrote Linda encouraging her not to regret her decision! A tea buffet is a simple and beautiful way to host a less formal tea gathering.
In fact, in many tea rooms I’ve visited, guests are encouraged to choose their own teacup before taking a seat. And remember, afternoon tea is not called high tea because it is traditionally served at low tables (like a coffee or tea table) instead of a high table (like the dining room table). Many teas are served from a buffet table.
Here are Tea Party Girl’s top six suggestions for serving a buffet tea:
Keep your food pretty, but simple. Serve nothing drippy, extra-hot (except the tea–more on that later!), or that requires cutting with a knife. Stick to tea sandwiches, scones, and bite-size desserts.
Stack salad-size plates for your guests to use for their finger foods. Guests should only have to carry the plate, a napkin, and a teacup with saucer.
As I have suggested before, serve only two teas-an herbal/decaf and a black tea of choice that you brew ahead. DO NOT put out a number of teabags for your guests to choose from and expect them to brew their own tea and deal with drippy teabags.
Stacked teacups (as seen in the picture above) are an appropriate way to conserve space at the buffet table. Appoint someone ahead of time the honor of pouring the tea for the guests. After offering the guests the two choices of tea, fill the teacup 2/3 full. This allows the tea to stay hot and gives them room for milk and sugar. Hand the teacup to the guest. REMEMBER~when serving tea do not separate the cup from the saucer, but always handle the cup from the saucer only.
It’s ideal for your guests to be able to sit by a low table within arms reach. If they are holding a teacup and a plate of goodies, they will need a place to set down one or the other, though they can possibly set their tea treat plate on their laps while holding their cup and saucer.
If you leave teapots on the buffet table for your guests to help themselves to another cup of tea, you must plan a way to keep the tea warm. This can be done through a carafe, tea cozy, or warmer. Again, the ideal is to appoint someone to make the tea in the kitchen and roam among the guests providing fresh and hot pours.
“If using a buffet table, use boxes under the tablecloth or three-tiered trays for visual height. Determine how you can incorporate your theme into the buffet’s decorations and provide plenty of serving utensils so people don’t have to use their fingers to select their items. And remember, no scented candles to interfere with the fragrance of the food and tea!”
Does that answer your question, Linda? Does anyone else have a question or advice to add regarding serving the tea party buffet-style? Please add your comment below.
As a reminder to my regular readers, my seasonal changes for this edition of planning a spring tea party are in bold print.
To begin planning your tea party event, no matter what the season or event you need start by answering a few questions:
How many people will you invite?
Who will they be?
What is your budget? How much does that give you per person?
When will your event take place?
What will be your theme? Some ideas for your spring event are available through my post,
Once you make these decisions, you need to send out your invitations. These can be done a number of ways. Remember, keep your budget in mind. I’ve listed some options below.
Telephone Calls (personal, but take up your time. depending on the number of people you are trying to coordinate).
Next, you need to plan the menu. Remember to keep your budget, theme, and time of day in mind. And DON’T forget to plan the tea. I’ve written a thorough article on The Steps to Creating a Tea Party Menu to help with your planning. Specific ways to incorporate flavors of spring in the traditional tea menu are with:
Once you’ve decided on your menu, think through how you will set your table. I’ve written some about setting the tea table already. Now is the time to think through what you already own, what you need to purchase, and what you can borrow. How many tables and chairs will you need? Remember, intimate is never more than eight, so take that into account when you think through your seating arrangement. What will be your centerpiece(s) and how you will incorporate your theme?
Include items in your table decorations that remind you of the season’s color and new beginnings. Start with what you can use from outside. Flowering branches are beautiful and inexpensive. Find a friend who would let you clip flowers from her garden, like daffodils or if it’s later in the season, roses. Purchase small pots of blooming bulbs like hyacinth or tulips. Remember to keep your centerpieces low enough so your guests can see one another.
If flowers are not your spring decoration of choice, there are many other fun details that remind one of the cool, crisp season of spring. Some ideas are polka-dots, tiny bows, pinstripes, gingham, and colored beads or pearls.
Part of setting your table means polishing any silver pieces and ironing any linens. Will you include a printed menu for your guests benefit? This is also the time to make/purchase some place-cards and decide what you want to give as a favor.
Take time now to decide what to wear and what music to play. How can these two elements add to your theme? This is the time of year to pull out the pastel-colors in your closet. Pick a color to wear by your face that is not a neutral; stay away from beige, black, and browns. If you own a lot of those colors, wear them on your bottom half. Some ideas for spring-themed music are:
Once these decisions are made, you will see your theme come together with all the elements that help us celebrate spring’s beauty. Be sure to spend some more time perusing Tea Party Girl’s archives for further details you might need to plan your tea party event. As always, feel free to email me or leave a comment with your questions as well.
Are you planning a spring-related tea event? Have you hosted one? Please share your experience/plan with us in the comments.
This week’s theme at Gracious Hospital-i-tea (click the image above to meet our hostess and learn more) is to share tea from a perspective of literature or to share a favorite tea book! If I didn’t write a blog about the tea party, I would probably write about books. I read, A LOT. More than I clean my home, go to the movies, or even (sometimes) interact with family and friends. Tea and books naturally go together; I think because both quietly slow us down and help us make friends with ourselves, an invaluable life skill.
Since starting Tea Party Girl last June, I’ve shared many of my favorite “Tea Reads“, including treasured fictional tea scenes. My all-time favorite is from The Hobbit, when Bilbo ends up hosting a secret meeting with the dwarfs right at teatime. Be sure to click on the title to read the entire post. And then there’s my favorite movie, Miss Potter, ABOUT a literature writer who because of her time in history and place in society observed afternoon tea often. The movie scenes are full of beautiful, Victorian afternoon tea settings.
Choosing a favorite tea-centric book proves much more challenging, so I trust no one will accuse me of cheating if I list my top seven tea-related book posts from Tea Party Girl’s history. In order to reach the post where I discuss the book, click on the book’s title.
The New Tea Companion by Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson (Know Your Tea Party Experts #1)
The Way to Tea by Jennifer Sauer (The Way to Tea–A Book Review)
Tea Celebrations by Alexandra Stoddard (A Few Tea Quotes for Your Weekend)
I’m looking forward to participating in as many weeks of the Tea Blog-a-Thon as possible. I trust you all had a beautiful Easter weekend. I celebrated with family in worship, feast, and play. It reached over 70 degrees here in Northern California and the sun shone brilliantly! I’m so thankful spring always comes!
If you end up participating in the tea blog-a-thon at your blog, would you tell us in our comments here? I would love to visit your Litera-tea entry, too.
“Beauty cannot be deeply appreciated until a soul has been touched by deformity.”
“Spring warms us because winter has chilled us.”
For so many, the deformity of life is denied or avoided. But like early spring weeds, if left unchecked, ugliness eventually takes over. It doesn’t just go away. But we are tempted to ignore it, because somehow we know, we’re often powerless on our own against the brokenness that can be our reality.
God understood this. We needed a better plan. Talk to anyone who has experienced painful injustice. A child is murdered or molested. A man of influence is blackmailed and imprisoned. A woman is beaten by the man who said he loved her. These people do not want the ugliness brushed aside!
For Christians and non-believers alike, historically a blameless man was brutally killed one Friday two thousand years ago in Jerusalem. He was not protected by the Jewish law of the day that declared a person could not be tried, judged guilty and sentenced to die all in the same day. What could have gone down in history, however, as a senseless crime of just another revolutionary instead has revolutionized countless souls for two thousand years. Why?
Because an innocent man and a perfect God understood that we cannot have beauty and new life without the suffering or the new life becomes meaningless.
And that’s why today is called GOOD Friday though it’s a day millions of people remember a death.
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