Posts filed under 'Children's Tea Party'
Yesterday’s tea party for Pink Dancer went very well (except for the 95 degrees part). I will post pictures of the tea table very soon. Each of the six children were served a dessert plate filled with:
- two tea sandwiches, one cut like a heart and one cut like a teapot with cookie cutters.
- one celery stick with peanut butter and raisins
- one small ramekin filled with ranch dressing with six petite carrots sticking up like orange birthday candles.
Now, there’s much more, but before I continue, I will confess almost all of the above was NOT eaten. So much for adding the healthy choices.
To continue…
- one Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookie (remember, I don’t bake and these were by request from the Birthday Girl
- one Le Petit Ecolier*, another store bought cookie
- one chocolate-dipped strawberry and one white-chocolate dipped strawberry each in little “Happy Birthday” paper candy cups (these I did make myself, I am proud to say.)
- two small bunches of grapes, one green and one red
I love making up plates and thinking of the mix of colors and variety of food. I served them on my grandmother’s every day dishes I inherited from her without fear.
We served hot (Anne Shirley’s Almond Black, naturally decaffeinated) and cold cherry iced tea. Most of the children, despite the weather, chose the hot tea because of the darling sugars they could add with milk. And at the end we brought out the cake.
The table looked lovely and a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s on its way. I was particularly thrilled with the beautiful centerpiece I made from $15 dollars of pink flowers from the grocery store (alstromeria, baby roses, and carnations). The children sat enraptured (and to my disturbance unfamiliar with the story) as I read “Rapunzel”, a version with classic, Renaissance-type paintings for illustrations. Rapunzel was the choice theme for my daughter. We played an opposite-type fishing game with a lllloooonnnngggg braid made from raffia that the children threw out of the tree-house window. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” the nine-year old would cry. The six-year olds threw it down and the nine-year old would attach a dollar-store prize. The children loved it.
Meanwhile, the mothers sat under the shade trees eating the same foods I had given the children laid out buffet-style and LOTS of iced tea. The heat and mess almost did me in, but the reward of shining faces in children’s wonder makes it all worthwhile.
June 15th, 2007
Before I share this week’s tip with you, I’d like to raise my teacup and say Thank You to all my recent visitors and comment-ers! My first ten days of blogging on WordPress has been wonderful thanks to all of you. I hope we continue to get to know each other over the virtual teapot as we meet tea party lovers all over the blog-o-sphere.
Tomorrow Pink-Dancer, my only daughter will turn six, and of course our celebration will include a tea party under the oaks in the backyard. There was a time when events such as these greatly stressed me out. One reason was perfectionism, but the other main reason was inexperience. The majority of the emotional effort of any tea or hospitali-tea event I supervised in the past went to making sure I had covered all the bases within budget. AND I did all this with little children in tow.
As I look back now, however, I realize this was just part of the learning curve. Just like everything else, learning to host a tea party or event takes resource, time, and experience AND gets easier as you go along.
Be prepared to gather items for tea parties a little at a time. If you see a teacup you like, especially in the thrift store-BUY IT. Before you know it, you’ll have enough and no, they don’t all have to match. If your grandmother or aunt wants to give you some fancy dinnerware~say YES unless you absolutely hate it. It’ll probably end up becoming just what you want later in life.
Tomorrow’s event will include real teacups for the boys and girls. They’ll fill them with milk, sugar, and tea and stir them with their little spoons. Maybe one will get broken. But it exposes them to the real-deal which is more important in the long run.
Over time, gather linens you love as well. We’ll use a real cloth tablecloth tomorrow, but paper napkins. This is because Pink Dancer still lights up at the paper goods display at the local grocery store, especially if there’s pink unicorns involved. But we compromise. I say yes to the paper napkins and heart-shaped paper plates, but no to the cheap, paper-crunchy table covering. The value of the beauty of a real table CLOTH far surpasses the little extra work involved.
I keep a plastic tote filled with everything I need for a quick tea party except the food and flowers. I kept a list of what I wanted in my wallet so I would remember and picked things up as I was able. Now it’s a breeze to easily host a tea event. Time and experience paid off.
So here’s my Simple Tea Tip in a nutshell: Start small, but start. Do not expect perfection. Go for it, even feel overwhelmed and tired afterwards but know this. It gets easier. Consider starting a tea tote. And the joy of taking tea with friends is worth the little extra work.
June 13th, 2007
This picture was taken at Teddy Bears and Tea Cups on Balboa Island. It’s a yearly event. My mother of Teaching Tea fame, on the left, was introduced to tea by her grandmother and my daughter, on the right (yes, that’s me in the middle) is learning quickly. She obviously enjoys the dress-up part!
The first time we visited two years ago (the shop was under different ownership), my daughter was dismayed when they put lemonade in her tea cup? “Where’s my tea?” she asked when she was only three. Granted, her favorite part of tea is adding the milk, and the sugar when I let her, but lemonade was not a suitable replacement. She’d been exposed to the real deal, just one example of my child-rearing philosophy gone well ;-).
I credit Teddy Bears and Tea Cups with getting one thing really right. They know their business is geared to children where adults have to be involved and they keep it their main focus. Their main shop is filled with treasures children love and adults in their lives can afford~good books, dress-up clothes, and personalized room decor. But it’s a shop for the tea lover as well with pots, cups, books, and accessories. They serve looseleaf tea, a difference from the previous owner, and it would seem the owner really loves to be in the kitchen because the food (especially the dessert~yum!~wish I could remember it) was very good.
Unfortunately, our server, a young girl, addressed our table the entire time as, “you guys”, my NUMBER ONE PET PEEVE (yes, I’m shouting) when I go out to tea. And though she had an apron on and great teen-age legs, she was in short-shorts(!). I know we were at the beach, but, sheesh.
Take time to notice the extensive doll collection behind me~wow! The section we sat in front of included most of the First Ladies.
June 4th, 2007
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