tea party

An STL250 Tea Party

I know I’ve run pretty far afield of what constitutes afternoon tea, but I wanted to do something special for St. Louis’ 250th birthday. I decided to go with some famous St. Louis foods, and a lot of fleurs-de-lis to celebrate St. Louis’ French heritage. Our soundtrack for tea was also a nod to St. Louis: Chuck Berry’s The Great Twenty-Eight.

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The tea of choice for today was French Vanilla. It was the best I could do in tying it in to the theme somehow, just because it has the word “French” in the title. I did consider using the 1904 World’s Fair connection with iced tea, but it is November, after all!

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I made a Gooey Butter cake, which is one of St. Louis’ most well-known baked goods:

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And toasted ravioli, another St. Louis favorite:

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We also had provel cheese, a St. Louis anomaly that I actually kind of like, and Volpi Roltini, which is prosciutto wrapped around mozzarella, from the meat market on The Hill:

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I made finger Jell-O in the colors of the St. Louis city flag (red, yellow, and blue, although I ended up with a cool rainbow effect where the colors blended), and shaped like fleurs-de-lis:

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And our favorite chocolate chip scones, also shaped like fleurs-de-lis:

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We also had finger sandwiches, shaped like, you guessed it, fleurs-de-lis:

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This was a kind of challenging tea party, because the theme was so different, but it was also really fun finding another way to celebrate St. Louis’ birthday that’s also unique to our family!

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An Independence Day Tea Party

I’ve been wanting to have a semi-ironic Independence Day tea party for a few years now (you know, Boston Tea Party and all). I had a few ideas last month, so I decided that this would be the year!

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It worked out well, because our kitchen is decorated for this event all year:

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And I found some cute little star candles and acrylic stars at Michael’s to add to the centerpiece:IMG_8064

Since I already had red, white, and blue table linens, I only had to spend about $5 for a fully decorated, very festive table! (No china this time, because if there was ever a holiday where china doesn’t work, it’s the Fourth of July! I should have just used paper plates…)

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We had iced tea, to make sure our tea party had the proper American twist, plus lots of red, white, and blue, and stars. Blue and red jello stars, red, white and blue strawberries, marshmallow “firecrackers,” Stars and Stripes Funfetti cupcakes, blueberries, star-shaped sugar cookies in the colors of the flag, and white cheese on red and blue toothpicks were all on the menu:

I did make scones (star-shaped, of course), and served English muffins (with blueberry jelly), so it wasn’t completely American. Plus, have you ever noticed what color the Union flag is? Hard to tell what we’re celebrating! Again, semi-ironic, which was exactly what I was going for!

This was a particularly fun tea party to plan, and I’m glad I finally came up with ideas for a very American afternoon tea!

A Tea Party for the Winter Olympics

Seeing as how we had a tea party for the London 2012 Olympics, I couldn’t very well let the Sochi games go by without doing something! I even found Russian Caravan tea, which was the perfect selection (or seemed like it at the time…I think it may be the most disgusting thing I have ever put in my mouth!)!

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My theme was Russian (of course), snowflakes, and blue and white…nice, wintry colors. I got to use my new white tablecloth (with an old blue runner), and our beautiful china. And unscented white tea lights and pillar candles from Target made for the perfect centerpiece:

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We has Russian tea cookies:

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And a Russian poppy seed bread (which sadly wasn’t very popular):

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Meringues (which I actually made correctly for the first time ever!):

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Snowflake sugar cookies:

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Snowflake Jell-O:

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An orange poppy seed cake (Did you know that poppy seeds are actually blue? They fit the theme perfectly!):

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English muffins with blueberry preserves:

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And fresh blueberries!

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I thought that this was going to be really hard to put together, from a menu standpoint. As it turns out, it wasn’t that bad at all!

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A Reformation Tea

Today we had a tea party for Reformation Day. The children suggested that I could decorate sugar cookies with Luther’s Seal, but that sounded a little too complicated, so instead our theme was pumpkins, apples, and cranberries; leaves, orange, red, and yellow.

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We had a nice variety of items on the table. If you click on the individual pictures, you can find out what everything was. We even got to try pumpkin Hershey’s kisses!

Ranch Cream Cheese Stuffed Mini Sweet Peppers
Pumpkin and Leaf Finger Jell-o
Pumpkin Shaped Pumpkin Butter Sandwiches
Millionaire Shortbread
Turkey Finger Sandwiches with Cranberry Relish
Cinnamon Apple Gateau
Pumpkin Tea!
Sugar Cookies

This was our first fall tea party, and it was a lot of fun to plan, especially since this is my favorite time of year!

A Tea Party for a Prince

I had promised the children that we’d have a tea party to celebrate the birth of Baby Cambridge (the future King George), but since Ryan was out-of-town last week, we decided to wait until he could join us for our celebration!

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I didn’t have as cohesive of a theme as usual…I threw in a little blue (for the baby boy), with the table runner, some Ghirardelli chocolates from Ryan’s trip, and the variety of tea (Bigelow English Teatime, in a lovely blue box), but I didn’t do anything with blue foods.

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For the most part, we just enjoyed some of our favorite tea party foods, with a new item thrown in (that was so popular, it will definitely become part of the permanent collection!)…an orange poppy-seed cake!

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We had our standard scones:

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And cucumber sandwiches:

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We had coronation chicken for dinner last night, so we enjoyed finger sandwiches made from the leftovers:

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Dried apricots and Cotswold cheese from England:

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Thumbprint cookies and shortbread:

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And, of course, finger jello:

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It was a fun way to celebrate the birth of the future King of England!

A Birthday Tea

Yesterday, we had a birthday tea party. Whose birthday was the cause for the celebration? Why, the Queen’s, of course! Her official birthday, marked by Trooping the Colour, was on Saturday, and we decided to make a long weekend of it, and keep the party going for tea!

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The them for the event was purple (the color of royalty), and crowns (obvious). I also threw in a little bit of green for an accent color, because it just looked so nice. For decorations on the table, we had purple Hershey’s kisses, candles, and purple carnations in a pretty English gin bottle that I’ve been saving for a few years to use as a vase. The tea of choice was Darjeeling, partly because it’s one of my favorite teas, and partly because it comes in a purple box!

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In addition to the tea, we had chocolate chip scones, sugar cookies, open-faced grape jelly sandwiches, and grape jello, all in the shape of crowns.

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We also had coronation chicken finger sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches and some nice reddish/purplish grapes.

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It all made for a very fun birthday celebration!

A Pentecost Tea

I know it’s a week late, but…we had our Pentecost tea party, that I had originally planned to actually have on Pentecost Sunday, a few days ago, but at least it was in the same week! I worked with a theme of red, and, since it’s spring, strawberries (which are conveniently also red!).

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We had lots of fresh strawberries we picked ourselves at Eckert’s:

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And strawberry muffins, made with more of the fruits of our labor (literally!):

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We also had red jello, not strawberry, but cherry, to mix things up:

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Since lemons go so well with strawberries, we had my favorite lemon shortbread:

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We also had chocolate chip scones, just because:

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Some English muffins:

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And a variety of toppings, including a special strawberry-peach jam:

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The tea of choice was Constant Comment, partly because it’s one of my favorites, and partly because it comes in red packets!

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A Tea Party for Easter Monday

To extend our Easter celebration, today we had an Easter Monday tea party. The table decorations were fairly simple: the runner we used on St. Patrick’s Day, the Paschal Candle we made on Holy Saturday, and some pretty Hershey’s kisses in pastel foils.

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We had some new items at our party, like deviled eggs:

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And old favorites like cucumber sandwiches:

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Sugar cookies in the shape of chicks and butterflies:

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Faux-linzer cookies, with spring-themed cutouts:

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Jell-O jigglers–both regular, and the creamy variation:

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And bunny-shaped jelly sandwiches:

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I chose a lemon tea for today’s party. Originally, I planned on getting Darjeeling, since it comes in such a pretty purple box (plus, it’s really good!), but I couldn’t get any at the store. I figured lemon fit the theme pretty well, though, so it worked out OK!

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I’m not sure when our next tea party will be. I’m thinking may a red-themed tea for Pentecost, but I’m still recovering from the month of March, so I’ll have to plan that out later!

St. Patrick’s Day Tea Party

Lots of “gold” coins, green, and shamrocks on our table for this tea party!

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Jelly sandwiches:

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Jell-O:

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Cucumber sandwiches (of course!):

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Irish tea cake:

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Sugar cookies:

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Our tea of choice for our St. Patrick’s Day party was Twinings Irish Breakfast. I was afraid that the children wouldn’t like it, because it wasn’t a flavored tea, but they all finished their cups, and some even had seconds!

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A Valentine’s Day Tea Party

I realize that I’m getting farther and farther away from what afternoon tea actually looks like, but I was going for thematic, not authentic. I think I did pretty well! I personally liked the Hershey’s Kisses scattered across the table…festive and delicious!

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Heart-shaped chocolate-strawberry jam sandwiches (the jam was a special treat since I couldn’t find any decent looking strawberries, and we had to settle for grapes instead):

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Cucumber sandwiches (of course!):

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White chocolate cranberry cookies:

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Sugar cookies:

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Cherry jello:

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Salted chocolate-covered caramels:

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Valentine’s Day cakes:

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The tea for the day was Raspberry Royale. I really wanted to get one of the Bigelow Valentine varieties, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I settled for something pink!

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