Last night, Steph W. of Steph’s Cup of Tea and I met for the first time ever over dinner! I have read about other bloggers meeting blogging friends in real life and I can finally say I’ve experienced this joy. Stephanie is one of the longest reading and most consistent commenters here at Tea Party Girl.
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!
Alice continues to share great information at Tea in My Cup, including this month’s Don’t Panic Tea (a personal favorite) and a helpful post on Tea for Large Groups. See her archives for the Don’t Panic Tea Plan.
I think these butterfly touches would be welcome at a spring or summer tea party, don’t you?
I’ll be honest, this tea blog totally bugs me. If you’re really interested in why you can ask me. But I will let you know about the list of free tea reads Tea Guy Speaks gathered since I’m always willing to set aside irritation to help promote literacy!
Creme fraiche is one of my favorite indulgences and here’s a recipe for DIY.
Speaking of recipes, this dessert has become my “someone’s coming in a half hour and I want a little touch-of-something to go with our tea” recipe. Even this non-baker can whip them up in five minutes flat. I just keep butterscotch chips on hand.
Lastly, I wish I’d had known about this website last summer when I planned the Sea Spa Tea Party. If you need some inspiration for seaside ambiance, this might help.
First, thank you for the comments! I’d love to hear from more of you. Please keep them coming, and let me know the number one struggle you have taking care of your home.
Last Tuesday, Dawnya Sasse of Start a Tea Business dot com interviewed me on a live call with her students for her Online Tea Business Class. It was a thrill to talk about what it’s been like to build this blog and the opportunities blogging can provide for tea businesses. There’s a link below that you can click to listen in, an interview available only to her students and the readers of this blog. If you are interested in starting a tea business, Dawnya’s resources are a great place to start. Thanks to her training, I’m sitting in my own home writing to you instead of floundering in a traditional tea room somewhere. Even if you’re not interested in a tea business, enjoy the interview as a blogger or a fan of Tea Party Girl.
Dawnya Sasse interviews Jenny Wells of Tea Party Girl dot com
Here’s a few other tea party tidbits I’ve been saving up for you:
I’ve been waiting patiently to share these Valentine’s with you. I gave them as a gift to an in-real-life friend first (she also reads this blog and I love surprises!). Not very tea party-ish, but so, so, fun! Especially if you were under eighteen in the 1970s. Be sure to check out superfay’s entire Etsy shop.
Did you know Hugh Grant and I hold something in common? Neither did I. If you don’t know much about Hugh Grant and are the more proper among us, read about the rest of his life at your own risk. But he could be interesting to have tea with, don’t you think?
One of the first blogs I found when I began my own was Risa of The Partea Planner. She lives in beautiful Orange County and runs such a successful event planning business that specializes in tea parties. Risa was featured in this month’s Teatime Magazine with a beautiful photo-rich feature. She shares some of her best tips for hosting a tea party event, from plenty of experience! I highly recommend seeking out a copy of the magazine and reading the article for inspiration and practical advice. But if you can’t get your hands on one, at least visit her blog for some of the pictures. The flowers she chooses for her parties alone leave me breathless.
This isn’t quite the view we’re enjoying today, but close. School was canceled, the children went sledding, and I made a few discoveries and wanted to pass them along. First, in light of yesterday’s post about a valentine-themed tea party, there’s a picture at Susan’s T-Cozy of what her Connecticut tearoom will serve for desserts at their valentine tea. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the post. The desserts look simple, pretty, and may inspire you to try your own.
Stephanie of Steph’s Cup of Tea committed to blogging about one special tea party per month this year and posted pictures of her January event, “Relax and Recycle”. Her pictures show others can pull 0ff a simple AND beautiful tea event, always the goal. I love her linen choices. Be sure to go see for yourself.
For a few darling tea party related products, be sure to look at these Mary Englebreit tea READING glasses that Angela McRae of Tea with Friends found through a tea friend. And because I don’t sew, I “sew” admire Karen’s work at Sweet Necessi-Teas and found this post especially filled with pretties. I would enjoy one of the aprons, personally. If I would just remember to wear it!
By the way, there’s still time to head over to the insanely trafficked “Rocks in My Dryer” who is hosting another Bloggy Giveaway Carnival. You have to visit to believe it. I haven’t entered or offered a prize this time around, but I’d hate for you to miss out! At this point, almost 700 blogs have listed items they will GIVE AWAY FREE if you visit their blog and enter their contest. Brew yourself some tea before you visit, because potentially you will be there quite a while.
If gathering inspiration and information is more your style instead of freebies, you can find a number of carnivals to peruse including the well-attended weekly Homeschooling Carnival hosted at Life on the Road this week. And GreenStyleMom hosts the Make it from Scratch blog carnival. You’ll find Tea Party Girl at both places, along with many talented and inspiring bloggers.
Yep, one could spend A LONG TIME surfing all that’s available on the web. Personally, I’m glad bikinis, sunscreen, and skills I don’t possess are not required. Most everyday at The Wellspring, at some point, all three of our computers are in use at once. Not always proud of that, but at least a snowy day once in awhile helps me feel more justified. I love finding reasons to stay inside, read and write, and drink liters of tea. Once I help the CHILDREN get suited up and ready to go outside and get fresh air, of course.
Thank you, dear readers, for all your comments over the last few weeks and for choosing to subscribe to Tea Party Girl. It’s been very exciting as a blogger to break the 100 readers barrier; a personal goal I set a few months back. Another hurdle I jumped this weekend was to record my first podcast, short and sweet as it is. You can find the 5-minute welcome message from me in the top right corner, just below my picture. I tend to be a reader over a listener myself; but I know that isn’t true for others (in fact, the percentage of the population who never reads a book after leaving school is quite staggering!).
Are you more of an audio or visual learner? I would love to hear your comments on the subject. Do you enjoy downloading podcasts from the Internet?
Congratulations, MzRita and MamaBugs! You were my first commenters to correctly guess what I left out of my spontaneous afternoon tea last Friday afternoon. Yep, if they had been readily available, I would have added a small bouquet of flowers and some creme fraiche/spread for the scones, which would have meant we needed knives. Some of you had great ideas, from cinnamon candies to a small favor. The key was to consider the very basics of what can potentially be thrown together at the last minute.
No one mentioned the lovely stack of books found in one of the pictures. Might of given a hint of WHOM I shared afternoon tea with.
MzRita and MamaBugs, contact me (from my ‘About‘ page) with your snail-mail address, and I’ll send you 2-ounces of my favorite tea.
Do you ever have the opportunity to sit down over tea with a friend in the afternoon? Where do you spend the majority of your afternoons? Would you feel confident to pull something together in a half-hour or less? Would you want to?
Again, your comments are always greatly appreciated.
with a beautiful photo-rich feature. She shares some of her best tips for hosting a tea party event, from plenty of experience! I highly recommend seeking out a copy of the magazine and reading the article for inspiration and practical advice. But if you can’t get your hands on one, at least 