Tea Report

 Hello all,

I cannot very well leave my readers without a report of the Autumn Tea. I just know you have been holding onto the edge of your seats, waiting to find how it turned out! ;)

In short, it turned out very well! I worked on decorations up to a week before and cooked for 3 days ahead of time. (Typical, I would say...either I cook for a week ahead of time and spread out the work, or something comes up and I end up cramming all the cooking into the last few days.) I ended up leaving out one recipe that I could not finish in time for the tea, because...

The power went out for 1.5 hours on the day of the tea. God answered prayer and turned it back on in time for most of the food to be done for the tea. I simply didn't have time to finish the Maple Walnut Sticky Buns I had planned for desert, but the crisp and pumpkin pie were just fine for the desert menu. Over all, I would say the tea was a success! 

Interestingly, not much tea was actually consumed. The hot cranberry apple cider that my mother made was simply irresistible, and it was more popular than the tea! I am partly to blame, because I had many cups of the juice and not one cup of the tea.

I've made up for it while I worked on this post by having some iced tea, now that there is no more hot cider. 

If you're curious about the menu, please refer to my last post. A few things changed between my posting and our eating - we added grapes, rosemary cashews, hot apple and cranberry cider and roasted butternut squash soup to the menu, and the maple walnut sticky buns, as you read above, never came to full fruition. Oh, and the potato leek soup turned into a potato shallot soup. It tasted just fine.

Onto the decorations: our theme was grey, buffalo check, and galvanized metal to go with our wooden table and the lodge vibe of our downstairs. We had the placemats already, and I made some things and we used what we had, so our spending on decor was a small amount.

 I bought this cute milk can and the faux foliage inside. My younger siblings gathered some fresh foliage to add to the arrangement.

I had so much fun making buffalo check decor. I loved how these food cards ("interpretive signs") turned out.

I used my mother's papercrafting supplies and the computer/printer to make the paper items.

These make more sense when they have napkins inside of them ;) but yes, they are paper napkin rings. 

Why the blue? You may ask. The china we were using for the tea was accented with a beautiful frosty blue, so I was trying to incorporate that color into the decor. 

Decorations on the shelf at the end of our dining room.

A good time was had by all, and as always the leftovers are nice to have around. 

And, if nothing else, it's always great to have this great excuse:

"Younger Brother, thou must wash the dishes tonight."

"Why canst thou do it, Older Sister, since thou art only reading thy novel on the couch?"

"Because, Younger Brother, I made thee that big ol' tea party 2 1/2 weeks ago. Now get to it."

--Miss Humphrey