Thir-Tea

My friend, Maria, wanted a tea party to celebrate her 30th birthday. She and I talked about a whole bunch of different ideas and ultimately I offered to host the party. With a whole bunch of help, I think we put together a nice tea. Linda, Laura, Janell and Mom each had my children for a couple hours that day, Chrissy helped me prepare, serve and clean up the party. I borrowed tea cups, tea pots, tablecloth, napkins and serving plates from my Mom, Jan and Maria. My mother-in-law contributed the ingredients for a couple recipes and the name cards. Chrissy made a dessert and one of the sandwiches and Maria's mom contributed the ingredients for a sandwich and the fruit kabobs.


I made a 2 layer chocolate cake with chocolate icing (from scratch) for the centerpiece. I would have hated for Maria to forget the reason for this party!


Each person had their own teapot filled with the tea of their choice. Thanks to Chrissy's collection of tea we had a large assortment of teas to choose from.


After salad and soup, we served cucumber, chicken salad and ham and cheese ribbon sandwiches. We also had hot spinach and artichoke dip on pumpernickel bread. Then we had orange chocolate chip scones with clotted cream. For dessert there were chocolate covered strawberries, white chocolate raspberry bars, brownie cupcakes (Chrissy's awesome recipe!) and fruit kabobs. Everyone took a piece of birthday cake home with them!


Chrissy did an awesome job arranging the serving plates. My Mom had the lavender basket that we served the scones in. She gave it to me saying she had never been able to use it and would be happy if I could think of a way to use it. I loved how the scones looked in it.

Chrissy took the picture above. Maria is in the middle with her Mom and Mother-in-law on either side of her.

Chrissy and I. I could not have done this without her. Her family had a hard time imagining her helping with a tea party, but if I hadn't known I would have thought she had done it before! She was awesome.

It was fun. Maybe some day I will do it again for a very very special occasion!