Tea Party Girl Says, “Let Them Eat Cake!”

Remember, I don’t bake. But guess who brought the homemade cake to the bridal shower over the weekend?

4 comments May 5th, 2008

A Favorite New Resource for Tea Party Girl’s Poetry Fans

Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare

Poetry has been around much longer than afternoon tea in Western Civilization. But in the honor of the Bard’s birthday and April being National Poetry Month, I wanted to share with you one of my recent favorite finds that helps me celebrate Beauty. Simplicity. Classically. Besides, I wasn’t invited to Suri’s tea party, so I can’t blog about that. (Oh, to just have five minutes surrounded by $17,000 worth of flowers…).

Far from the expert, I experienced the richness of poetry, including Donne, Bradstreet, Herbert, and Shakespeare in the last few years out of the sheer necessity of needing to teach it. And my children memorize poems as part of their grammar curriculum. One is particularly despised and appreciated at The Wellspring with a love-hate relationship:

A Tragic Story by William Makepeace Thackeray
There liv’d a sage in days of yore
And he a handsome pigtail wore
But wonder’d much and sorrow’d more,
Because it hung behind him.

He mus’d upon this curious case,
And swore he’d change the pigtail’s place,
And have it hanging at his face
Not dangling there behind him

Says he, “The mystery I’ve found, –
I’ll turn me round,” –
He turn’d round,
But still it hung behind him.

Then round and round, and out and in,
All day the puzzled sage did spin;
In vain — it matter’d not a pin –
The pigtail hung behind him.>

And right and left, and round about,
And up and down, and in and out,
He turn’d, but still the pigtail stout
Hung steadily behind him.

And though his efforts never slack,
And though he twist, and twirl, and tack,
Alas, still faithful to his back,
The pigtail hangs behind him.

Now, the teacher of literature seeks to teach students of literature that to truly appreciate poetry, it needs to be read aloud. One must play with the words and let them roll on the tongue, savoring their flavors and combinations. And now I know how to help them believe me. Mental multivitamin recently turned me on to one of my absolutely favorite new resources, When Love Speaks.

It captured my interest immediately when it opened with the whispers of one of my favorite actors reading Shakespeare as if we were sitting in the drawing room drinking sherry with a small group after dinner. With the occasional melodic interpretation interspersed throughout, over fifty tracks based on Shakespeare’s sonnets are read by famous actors with all their talent inflecting their expression at just the correct time.

In the day where our local radio station still plays Air Supply on Saturday nights (and they wonder why they’re a dying medium?) and not all of us are into Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body”, I’d like to think romantic couples somewhere might enjoy this instead. Truly, even if sharing sonnets with your significant other is not your sentiment, purchase this CD for yourself and listen to the writings of the greatest writer of the the English language. There’s nothing like hearing it read by Colonel Brandon (or Severus Snape, depending on your current literary bend) to turn one into a fan.

Are you a Shakespeare fan? Could you be? Remember, it was the ale-swigging peasants that crowded the theater floors willing to stand throughout his performances. He isn’t for highbrow intellectuals. Just like tea parties, sometimes Shakespeare’s given the bad rap of stuffiness.

3 comments April 23rd, 2008

A Spring Surprise Tea Party for Tea Party Girl

I thought my girlfriend and I were visiting a local tea room to mark the last year I’ll spend in my 30s (!), but these ladies had a better plan!

Nine dear friends surprised me with a birthday tea yesterday!

Carleen is my number one tea student and friend–she was our hostess.

I laughed and cried with these ladies as they presented me with flowers, gifts, and words of affirmation.

We were so happy to just sit, gab, and laugh together.

They honored me with my favorite children’s picture book, Miss Rumphius, the story of the Lupine Lady.

See the lupine seed packet at the top right? They were a simple and beautiful favor to remind us all of the day.

I loved how they decorated the punch bowl simply and beautifully with the in-season camellia flower.

My friend is more autumn than spring in her style, and yet she pulled together a simple and beautiful floral theme.

Our menu included roasted carrot soup, herb chicken salad sandwiches, goat cheese prosciutto maki rolls with asparagus, spinach salad with poppy seed dressing, fresh fruit, a creme brule’ black tea (a favorite among my friends thanks to a popular local tearoom), and in honor of this entry, cupcakes!

Thank you, dear friends, for bringing spring to my soul through your simple acts of beauty and kindness.

And thank you for providing me such a fabulous entry to Risa’s First Day of Spring Virtual Tea Party! Please join us, it’s not too late! I hope it’s beginning to feel like spring wherever you live.

10 comments March 17th, 2008

So What Was Your Best and Worst?

I don’t know about you, but when I reach the end of the holiday season, I feel like the marathon runner who collapses after crossing the finish line.

Every year I think I’ll do a better job of staying balanced, saying yes to the right things, and keeping the season simple. And it’s true: over time and with experience, I’ve learned a great deal about these things. But in reality, December’s magic-making of Christmas, birthdays, get-togethers, and hospitality falls on me. And I reach the end satisfied, but wiped out.

So how about you?

How did it go?

What was your best and worst?

It’s a question often asked around our dinner table after a day that pulled the family members in many different directions. A few friends and I use it to springboard catching up. As you look back over your work of the last month, ask yourself the same question. I plan to write my answers down and refer to them next year as I pull out the Christmas decorations. Being reminded of this December’s best and worst will help me as I begin to prepare for next December.

Tea Party Girl’s Best of December

I paid attention to my own advice. My hospitality table came in handy more than once. Often, at the last minute, I grabbed a hostess or teacher gift already wrapped and ready. I served tea and “little touches of something” to drop-in neighbors and friends with ease throughout December. And I used it for myself when needed. Even when the demands felt high, I could easily take a break. I nurtured my five senses in simple ways by playing beautiful music, lighting candles, brewing favorite looseleaf teas, and spending moments snuggled by the fire. Thanks to the advice of Semicolon, the children and I watched some great Christmas movies we never had before like Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and George C. Scott’s version of A Christmas Carol. By sprinkling simple Christmas moments, throughout the month with them we had a number of magical moments to cherish.

But motherhood is a two-edged sword. And it pierced deep this month as I realized…

Tea Party Girl’s Worst of December

This was the first year the children hung onto the Santa magic by a thread. Deep sigh. I think it snowballs (no pun intended) as the oldest learns “the truth”. It didn’t help that the six year old found some of the stocking stuffers during the carpet installation move. I found this reality incredibly sad. I also realized children cannot be satiated. No matter how much “magic” we created one day, they are always ready for more the next. It’s one of the great resources of childhood. But I still put too much pressure on myself to “make it happen” for them, end up depleted, and resent them for their childhood immaturity that doesn’t understand Mom’s limits. There’s still some lessons for us all to learn.

What was your best and worst? Feel free to add to the discussion below.

2 comments December 31st, 2007

‘Tis the Season - A Tea Party Girl Update

My regular readers may have noticed a few slight changes that have taken place here at Tea Party Girl the last few weeks. Since the beginning of July, I have written around 50,00 words, the most consistent writing I’ve ever attempted. This is because of a commitment I made to write an entry every weekday of around 500 words. The last few weeks, however, I have only published an average of three posts/week.

You may also have noticed I have not written any tea party specific posts since I wrote about children’s tea parties in the middle of November. Part of the reason for that is the 50,000 previous words I DID write about tea in all the categories listed in my sidebar. While I still have a number of tea party angles left to explore, I needed a slight break.

During this time, my heading changed. While I enjoyed installing the new graphic, I omitted for sake of room my byline, “Teaching You the Beautiful and Simple Afternoon Tea”. This omission meant I took time thinking about my blog’s focus, direction, depth and breadth. Hence some experimentation with broader-focused entries,writing instead about hosting others in our homes in general.

I wanted to take a moment to share with you some of the reasons for these minor changes. I admit, setting aside time to write consistently has proved very challenging, with personal pressures wanting to steal the time away any chance they could. And in the past few weeks as sickness, holidays, and home projects encroached on my writing time, I let them. This resulted in fewer posts after a season of such consistency.

I also reached a point in my Blog Mastermind program of real challenge. And I’ve been a little stuck. I know what I need to do, but it’s going to take some time, even more than I’ve been giving the blog up to this point. I can’t seem to figure out how to move the blog to a new level AND continue to write 2500 words/week. So I’m wrestling through those thoughts as well.

During this season I’ve been watching my stats. I’m very excited to say that Tea Party Girl is now on the first page of Google results for the term “tea party” and “tea parties”, which has resulted in a great deal more traffic. However, my RSS feed count has stayed completely the same. And while traffic is great, as a blogger, I want to work for you, my regular readers, not Google, over the long-haul.

That’s where you come in. I would love to hear from you. If you are a regular reader of TPG, would you leave a comment? Let me know if you’ve subscribed to TPG through RSS or email, why you return, and what you would like to see more of here? Any type of feedback is very welcome.

Many of you comment here regularly, and it is great to hear from readers! Thank you for each and every one. Have a wonderful weekend. And whatever your obligations or weather, I hope you and your tea corner meet up sometime in the midst of it.

11 comments December 7th, 2007