Tea At Gail's: July 2013

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Butterfly Tea

These butterfly plates (found at TJ Maxx) were the inspiration for my butterfly tea. I don't like to use paper products for my teas but these were too cute to pass up and I convinced myself paper plates were OK for an outdoor tea. I have been wanting to try "floating icing" on cookies so decided to give it a try with butterflies which I placed in each cup.

My mom did the cross stitch on the table cloth.

Another view of the table.

Chicken Salad Tarts

Lemon-Poppy Seed Zucchini Bread

Herbed Strawberry Sandwiches

Cream Scones with Lemon Curd and Blackberry Jam

Butterfly Cookies

Pavlova with Lemon Cream and Berries

Lemon Bars

Blueberry Cheesecake Bars

Lipton's Blackberry Vanilla Tea

Gevalia Green Tea with Mango

My tiered tray has pink roses on it. I added crocheted hot pads in blue to go with my color scheme.

Teacups ready for the addition of a butterfly cookie and trip to the patio. Rain was threatening and I didn't set the table until 10 minutes before the ladies were due to arrive. We lucked out with just a few sprinkles. Unfortuately I didn't have much time to take photos. I'm so envious of bloggers with the professional quality photos.

Desserts.

Can you see the butterfly drip catcher on the teapot?

A new tea tile and tea bag holder that I used for lemons. The metal bird is a lemon squeezer.

The butterfly vase was on a patio table didn't appear in any of the photos so took a photo inside. This is an "Andover China" Vase. Andover China was produced locally in the late1940's.

The tea lady obligatory photo

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Lavender Tea

I watched my garden carefully for the lavender to come into bloom so I could host a lavender tea using a new violet teapot and my violet teacups.

Playing with ideas inside

I started building my tablescape with a lavender piece of fabric as my tablecloth. I wanted to use my Heishey clear plates but needed to boost the color against the tablecloth so pulled my first faux pas of the tea by using purple paper plates as chargers. Needing still more contrast I used large doilies as place mats. I had a lavender print paper napkin that I layered with a another purple napkin on top of a white linen napkins. Overkill, yes, but it created the desired effect. The second faux pas in the photo above is the use of jam in a jar complete with label. The jams, however, were purchased for the tea at a local festival because they contained lavender.

I set the table a couple hours before the tea turning my plates and cups upside down to keep any bugs off and unfortunately forgot to turn them over before I took pictures! Each place setting had their own tea strainer for the herbal teas we would try.