Marie (no url) asked today: I was just asked this past Sunday to host a tea party for the ladies at our church. I came across your website via Google and very glad I did! I have no experience whatsoever with tea parties and your tips are very helpful. But what if I don’t have tea cups and saucers for 20 women? Would it be too tacky to have 20 different cups/saucer sets?

Marie, not only is it not tacky, I recommend it! Teacups are unique and add to the drama of the table when they are not all the same. The tea party with matching teacups is usually only found at the formal hotel tea or with professional caterers of large parties that buy their stock in lots. Sometimes for events such as yours the guests are asked to bring a favorite teacup and share its history as in, “This was the one item my grandmother saved from her house fire that Grandpa didn’t make her sell during the Depression”, etc.

It is best to have the cup match its saucer unless you’re a little girl inviting your stuffed animals to the event, however.

I’m so glad you found Tea Party Girl helpful! Be sure to come back and share how your event goes (went?).

Hello! Love your site - just found it today! My question is: can you brew your tea in the pot or kettle the water was boiled in? Or are they supposed to be only for boiling the water? I’ve just wondered if a teapot was always necessary. Thank you!

No, Luticia, a teapot is not always necessary. I currently use my Bodum Glass Stovetop Kettle to boil the water and brew my tea. I use T - Sac # 4 (100 filters) to hold my looseleaf tea so there’s plenty of room for the tea leaves to expand. It can be a little tricky because when I take the lid off after the water’s boiling I have to watch out for the hot steam. But it is easier to skip the teapot brewing step, though I do transfer the tea to my carafe to keep it hot once I’ve brewed it.

The teapot addition to a daily tea ritual or tea party mainly serves an aesthetic purpose, like all tableware. Serving tea from a tea kettle just wouldn’t be the same as pouring from a favorite teapot. But remember, the most important part of serving tea is making a plan to keep it hot, either with a tea warmer , cozy, or carafe. No teapot is beautiful enough for serving lukewarm tea.

Does that help? Anyone want to add a different perspective?

Maybe you’re already able to easily transport yourself to the relish the gifts of summer. I’m sure someone somewhere has already said that summer is a state of mind. If I had to only rely on my childhood memories of summer, I would remember 7am swim practices at the local pool, eating dozens of plums off my friend’s backyard tree while lounging more by her pool and talking about our latest crushes, and practicing my writing on (insert deep sigh here) an electric typewriter.

But as I get older, I find myself relying more on summer talismans: anything whose presence exercises a remarkable or powerful influence on human feelings or actions. These include:

• a pair of colorful flip-flops with painted toenails.
• popsicles to offer any child that walks through the door.
• a basket of reading and writing materials by my deck chair to go with my glass of iced tea or Sauvignon Blanc.
• Susan Branch’s The Summer Book.

Have you discovered Susan Branch yet? I spent time with her work today and it truly inspired me to create works of art in my summer meals. Not over the top, buy 14 new ingredients and still not have it look like the picture recipes, but recipes and inspirations filled with little touches to make them special. Here’s a copy of my favorite. And in case you didn’t know, Susan Branch illustrates every one of her recipe pages, including the text. Blogging format hardly does it justice.

Fisher Farm Picnic Squash Salad

8 cups very thinly sliced squash, any kind (yellow crookneck and green zucchini=pretty!)

2 cups Paul Newman’s salad dressing

20 fresh nasturtium blossoms

2 Tablespoons fresh herb of choice (optional)

Put the squash into a large bowl. Bring salad dressing to near boil ~ pour over squash, toss lightly & then chill. Before serving toss again ~ pour off extra dressing. Toss again with fresh herbs & top with fresh nasturtiums.

Yes, nasturtiums are edible if you haven’t watered them with Miracle Grow. On the recipe page, she encircles the text with a nasturtium vine wreath and includes a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “Earth laughs in flowers.” I find myself emotionally responding to these darling and simple beauties.

How about you? What are your summer childhood memories? Have you been able to hang on to the specialness of summer as you’ve grown? What simple summer delights do you treasure? Please leave a comment and let us know.

A graduate from the Washington School of Protocol (and it showed!), Stephanie shared with me about falling in love with afternoon tea in Ireland and taking Denise LeCroy’s Tea in London tour. A young and beautiful thirty-five years, Stephanie was gracious and a good conversationalist. Here’s a picture of our shared Cherry Creme Brule and Mint after-dinner tisane.

We ate at Paul Martin’s American Bistro in Roseville, CA; a local (for me!) restaurant that plans its menus around the best seasonal ingredients available. My kind of place for sure, and it was a thrill to share it with a new friend who also could appreciate it. We chuckled over not enjoying afternoon tea together, but our schedules allowed for a relaxing dinner instead.

Thank you, Stephanie, for taking the risk and meeting together!

I spent some time with her book this afternoon (accompanied by a cup of Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold loose leaf tea). Not sure what to expect, I enjoyed finding not only thirteen new themed tea party ideas, but learning about Celtic history and how it relates to the tea culture. With Irish and Welsh ancestry living in a town founded by Cornish immigrants, I wanted to learn how tea traditions did not belong to the English alone.

I first turned to July’s theme, the Hen Party Tea. I always thought calling women a group of hens derogatory, as if we all “cackled”, but instead I learned it’s an old Scottish custom where the women gathered the night before a wedding to pluck hens for the wedding feast. Now, Ms. Knight isn’t advocating we all gather to pluck hens, but to celebrate the best of our strengths and contributions over the ages. One of my favorite of her ideas was to offer, in her words, the original chic(k) lit book - The Little Red Hen as the tea party favor. Do you know the story? Isn’t that just a darling idea?

Another resource the book provides is one of the best charts, A Guide to Teas, I’ve seen. It includes the tea-type (i.e. black), its place of origin, a description, the brewing time, serving suggestions, and a list of complimentary foods. And because my tea table article is the most-read article here at Tea Party Girl, I’ll mention that I found the appendix Set to a Tea: The Tea Table a simple and complete explanation of what your tea table needs and why.

The book was issued by Benjamin Press, Bruce and Shelley Richardson’s publishing arm of their work. If you haven’t yet heard of the Richardsons, it’s worth spending some time at their website and learning about their contributions to Americans learning to appreciate afternoon tea. They operated arguably the most recently famous tearoom, the Elmwood Inn, from 1990-2004 in Perryville, KY and the teas are still available, along with cookbooks based on the afternoon tea menus from those days. Of the two I own, I like A Year of Teas at the Elmwood Inn the best because the menus are organized by month which helps my full brain with decisions. But all their books are well-photographed and the other book I own, The Tea Table, is full of “Tea Time Hints”. Here’s an example appropriate for this time of year:

“Keep your tea out of the sun! Making sun tea is no longer promoted by the tea industry. Putting tea in the water and placing it in the sun for several hours is like making a petri dish for the growth of bacteria. While tea does not contain harmful bacteria in its dry state, it can become a haven for bacteria when brewed and cooled. In traditional brewing methods, the addition of boiling water kills any bacteria that might be present. If you do make sun tea, be sure to boil it before you consume it.” (Richardson, 65)

Any Benjamin Press books make great gifts for the tea or book enthusiast. Who do you need a gift for? Are you Celtic? Do you know the story of the Little Red Hen? Had you heard of Elizabeth Knight, Bruce and Shelley Richardson, or the Elmwood Inn before today? Do you still make sun tea? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with us.

This post comes during the process of preparing my family’s wardrobe for a semi-formal Saturday evening wedding. It’s taking a lot of work! Not only do I need to gather all the items for all five of us (”hmm…I guess Plays with Fire can’t wear his hiking boot socks with his suit”), but I need to make sure the items that we rarely pull out of the closet are clean, pressed, and mended. My daily lifestyle doesn’t prepare me for this level of wardrobe scrutiny! But every once-in-a-while, special events pull us out of our dailiness and require more preparation. Any work and investment done ahead of time (Boy, am I glad we accepted that suit when my parents offered to buy it!) means a greater ease when the time for needing it all comes.

The tea party can be the same way. While I am a believer in the daily tea ritual and the ability to take advantage of impromptu hospitality opportunities, to prepare for the special occasion tea party takes time, work, and investment. Is it possible you need to be prepared?

From The Art of the Table: A Complete Guide to Table Setting, Table Manners, and Tableware:

“The accoutrements of the formal tea service include a teapot, hot-water kettle with an alcohol burner (to keep water hot), a sugar bowl with sugar cubes, sugar tongs, a creamer with whole milk, a tea caddy with loose-leaf tea, a caddy spoon to measure tea, a tea strainer to strain tea, a waste bowl to hold the dregs of tea, and a lemon plate with sliced lemon, a lemon fork, or a lemon pick.”

Here’s a few of Tea Party Girl’s own thoughts about the formal tea party:

1. Give the tea center-stage. Make sure it stays hot and is brewed correctly from quality looseleaf tea.
2. Pour the tea well. This means not filling the cups too full, separating the cups from their saucers, or having to reach across your guests to pour it.
3. If you’ve been invited to a formal tea as a guest, DO NOT fill your cup to the rim with milk and sugar. Ideally, someone else is preparing your tea for you as is proper at a formal tea party. And nibble, don’t gobble the food provided.
4. Lay out, borrow, or buy the best you can of silver, porcelain, and white linen.
5. If you can’t brew the tea neatly in front of your guests with the process described above, brew the tea in the kitchen. Do not expect your guests to brew their own tea, with bags or with leaves.

The book provides a thorough explanation of the serving process and tea table setting. The etiquette of tea pouring at a formal tea party places the proper importance of the beverage as the center of the event and worth reading.

Any other thoughts on the formal tea? My dear mother who went to college in the early 60s in the South was quite surprised to learn the local college sororities couldn’t care less about tea education. What occasions still call for a formal tea service? Do you think it will ever find mainstream status again? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think.

A special note for my email subscribers: If you click on the title of my post in your email or any item highlighted in blue, it will take you directly to my site where you can post a comment or participate in a poll. Please vote in Monday’s poll if you haven’t yet, as I know it’s not possible without directly visiting my site. We’d like to know your opinion, too!

Lastly, I expect to be off-line most of the rest of the week because of the out-of-town wedding this weekend. But look for a new post Monday!

Here’s a link to the choices. Be sure to scroll down. Take a look and then come back and click on the poll below. It’s fun to read a little about British history during your decade of choice. And feel free to leave a comment and tell us your favorite as well. While I wait to hear from you, I’ll be checking to see if any of the Polka Rose is showing up on eBay yet. Darling! Unfortunately, the website doesn’t do the color justice as represented in the print magazine.

Tea Party Girl is almost one-year old and in that time I’ve sold more books based on my recommendations than anything else (even tea!). It’s fun because I used to dream of opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore, a dream which has become obsolete for many in the age of Amazon and the big box bookstores.

I like to think that books will never become obsolete because they will continue to be passed from one generation to the next.

So just for fun, here’s the number one best seller at the Tea Party Girl bookstore since July 1, 2007:

More readers inquired (clicked) on these two book links over any other:

And the single book that’s generated the most discussion through comments:

Please leave a comment and share with us some of your thoughts about the questions posed above.

1. Relieve your guests from the guess-work of where to sit.
2. Give your event a friendly but dressy and prepared-for feel.
3. Show your thoughtfulness as a hostess, choosing the best for your guests based on previous relationships, personalities, and the possibility of new friendships.

Your place cards can be simply made with your printer or own beautiful handwriting and some pretty paper, as illustrated in the picture above. Yet creative, theme-based place card holders can add a whimsical touch to your event. They can also double as the party favors. Here are some examples of my favorites:

• For an Asian-themed tea, use these coin purses in contemporary colors as place card holders AND your party favor.
• Silver Teapot Place Card Holders (set of 4): simple, elegant, and can be used over and over again.
• Bring flowers, place cards and favors all in one with this bud vase and place card holder.
• Tie your guest’s name to a cookie cutter in your theme with an organza or grosgrain ribbon.
• Because I was a child in the 70s, these push-up toys and a Sharpie could be great fun.

Intimate is never more than eight, so try to keep your sit-down event to 4-8 seated guests per table.

Chalke reminded me that when people asked William Wilberforce what they could do to help move Parliament’s hand to abolish the slave trade in England, he told them to stop taking sugar in their tea. In other words, government listens when consumers affect the economic balances of our societies and in the early 1800s, the slaves worked on the sugar plantations. But if no one bought the sugar…they wouldn’t need the slaves.

Forty-three percent of the world’s chocolate comes from cocoa beans harvested in Cote D’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) of Africa. An estimated 12,000 children have been trafficked to harvest these cocoa beans. No candy bar is worth eating if I know one child has been separated from Mom and forced to work.

Thanks to the Internet and our access to information, we can make knowledgeable consumer decisions relatively easily. Websites and companies like Equal Exchange allow us to learn how to purchase our daily pleasures that are not grown in the United States–mainly coffee, tea, and chocolate. Some tea companies deal exclusively with fair trade teas such as Rishi and Fair Trade Teas. But many tea companies offer some fair trade teas in their selections, and it’s always worth asking.

It’s been said ignorance is bliss and I say, it’s true. Life is easier when I don’t know that the small decisions I’m making affect the lives of others in dramatic ways. But my bliss cannot be my goal. I sang, “Jesus loves the little children…All the children of the world” to my daughter tonight with new understanding. Her innocence and safety has been protected through deep sacrifices on my part. Does that mean my anthropology professors in college were right and I do this because I’m programmed to protect my genes? What a sad testimony to the human spirit that would be! No, I may not be able to take every child under my roof, but if by asking a few questions, spending some extra pennies, and sharing what I know I can help protect another child’s innocence and safety, I will.

I hope you will, too.