Baby Tea

Once in a while something fantastic happens to one of my very closest friends and I get it in my head that I want to do something nice for them to celebrate the occasion. This was one of those times. My very good friend Alison (yes this one) is having her first baby just about one month from now. She's been very tired and while she at first thought she'd have a housewarming/baby shower at her new house, very quickly realized she'd absolutely NOT have the energy. I couldn't let my friend have her first baby without first having a baby shower! No way in heck! But my place is small so it wouldn't be possible to invite a large crowd...therefore I went small and sweet and threw her:

A Tea Party Baby Shower

Afternoon Tea for Ali's Baby Boy

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I completely ♥ afternoon tea. After going to Lovejoy's, I decided I wanted to start buying my own "tea throwing paraphernalia" and host a tea party! I mean, gosh, think of it: sandwiches, scones, boiling water and cookies? How difficult a cooking project is THAT? As most tea-goers know, the charm of afternoon tea is less about the food and more about the "cutesy". You want good service and you want good food (and enough food) but after that it's all charm.

It's not very often I'm NOT full from afternoon tea!

Well, I didn't exactly own enough "charm". ie: I don't own china. or fancy tea cups. or silver. Poor me. Yet, my Auntie Betty does. And not only does she own china and fancy antique tea cups and silver, she has multiple sets of all the above. She could probably host a tea party for 25! and would! So a trip to the coast was in order, and 2-boxes-loaded-into-my car later... I was ready for my tea party!

I pulled out my tripod later :)

As always happens when I plan any event for someone I care about, I got a little ambitious. Not only did create and assemble the invitations at home, I hand-knit all of Ali's baby gifts (more on those in a future post), designed and printed the onesies I hung to decorate, made and decorated pillow boxes for favors, made up my own baby games (I hate most games) and as usual, cooked and baked as many things from scratch as I could. {PROUD}

Selena won the baby animals game ~~~ Liz won the celebrity baby names game!

The makings for a wonderful baby shower...

Our menu for the afternoon:

Tea: Vanilla Bean Black Tea & Black Current Herbal Tea
Fruit: Fruit salad with pineapple cream dressing
Sandwiches: Chicken & apple salad, smoked salmon with herb butter, tomato with basil & mozzarella, onion & egg salad, and roast beef with horseradish cream cheese and baby arugula
Scones: Fresh baked cranberry scones with homemade lemon curd and Devonshire cream
Dessert: Pecan snowball cookies, green tea French macarons with green tea buttercream and blue raspberry French macarons with dark chocolate ganache.

Homemade macarons are always a show stopper ;)

I guess most of the girls hadn't been around too many pregnant women?!

I was incredibly proud of the end result. As much as I'd like to be humble and say that all the praise I got from the guests wasn't a big deal - it was. I love that my hard work goes noticed. I love that I can do the things I do and create the things I create, and make something special and nice for someone else. I truly believe that all the good I can do in this world will come back to me. But if not, it's nice to be complimented when it happens!!!

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Small and sweet, and perfect

A tea party at home can only really be pulled off with a smaller group of people since you have to be able to sit around a table, and you have to have enough nice dishes to go around. But we kept the list small since my house is. And six was certainly not difficult to fit around a table! Lucky for me Ali was craving sandwiches this week. I suppose I would have been in luck were it the week she was craving cookies as well.

Ali will be a wonderful mommy...

It was such a nice, relaxing and wonderful shower. I'm allowed to say that even as the hostess, right? Ahh, I ♥ tea. And Ali.