A Perfect Princess Tea Party

Time to dust off my keyboard and get back to blogging....

Here are photos of Raina's "Perfect Princess Tea Party" to celebrate her 5th Birthday. Thank you so much to Elegant Visions for the professional images, Dean is just the sweetest guy, and delivered the images so fast!

Click Here to view the entire photo gallery with music.

I am so grateful to my good friend Carolyn of CHS Creative Productions for coming over and setting up all the gorgeous pink fabric draping and the canopy over the tea table, and loaning me some of her props and silk trees. If it wasn't for her beautiful drapery, then it would have looked just like a normal drive-way. She created the perfect ambiance for the party! If you in the Los Angeles / Orange County area and need event, wedding or holiday decor or draping, she is amazing. Thank you Carolyn, I *heart* you so much!!!

Kelly, from Kelly's Karacters was the perfect Cinderella princess to come and visit with Raina and her party guests! She conducted a princess coronation, sang beautifully, played games & dances, taught the girls tea table etiquette & manners, helped with the birthday cake and decorating cupcakes and just made the party so very magical! I can't imagine what the party would have been like without her talents, it would not have had the "sparkle" without her! Thank you so much Kelly for your graciousness and loveliness!

It truly was a "perfect" princess party, but not without the help of true professionals! Thank you so much again, and I will forever treasure the memories.

A St. Patrick's "Irish Cream" Tea Time

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I had not planned on doing anything special for St. Patty's day. I ran to the grocery store for a few things for dinner, and the bakery had all their seasonal - and very cute - tempting green frosted cookies and cupcakes right there front and center. Dammit, they did it to me again! Well, actually they did it to Raina who zoned in on them immediately. So I said okay, she could put the clamshell container of the two-bite cupcakes (the label says two-bite, but uhm, it's really one-bite) in her mini-shopping cart, and that we would have them for dessert.

You know those children's books "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" where one thing leads to another? I feel that is generally how my days just end up sometimes, all kooky and crazy and totally A.D.D.

So......we have these cute cupcakes........why waste the cuteness on just dessert? Let's have them for a tea time instead!

Well, if we are going to have tea, then I will need to bake some scones.

And if I am going to bake some scones, then I will need to look up my favorite scone recipe on my computer folder.

While I am at it, I should organize my scone recipes from favorite to low-fat.

Now that they are all organized, I should print them and put them in page protectors.

Since we are having a tea with a theme, I should find any St. Patrick's day stuff to add to the cuteness. And on and on it goes.

You get the idea.

So here are the results of an impromptu "Irish Cream Tea"..........thanks to one-bite cupcakes.

Raina and Holly-Doodle ready for tea.

Very green Irish Cream scones (sprinkled with Lucky Charms ♣),
and store bought cookies & cupcakes.
The cupcakes that started it all today.....

She prayed for all the Disney Princesses. And Prince Phillip, whoever that is.

Pouring her "tea". Then she added three sugar cubes.

What a poser.

All the stains on her shirt are from some chocolate coins

someone gave her at pre-school. I thought about Photoshopping the stains out so you

wouldn't think I was too white trash. That thought lasted for a second.

I'm over it.

So, I hope everyone enjoyed their St. Patty's day and that the Luck 'o the Irish was with you!

Our Easter & Tea Party

I bought this dress at a thrift store when I was still pregnant with her. I loved the delicate pink and green flowers in the pattern, and especially the collar. Back then I thought This is going to hang in her closet FOREVER before she will get to wear it someday.

Well, that day was today. And all day I had an almost sad, melancholy mood and I knew it was because I can't believe she is already big enough to wear a dress I got almost three years ago. Can I get a remote like the one Adam Sandler had in Click and just put my life on Pause for a while?

Here is the tea table I threw together. I wasn't planning on doing a tea, but since dearest hubby was glued to watching The Masters golf all afternoon and me and kids were on our own, I decided to have them help me have an Easter tea. I put a link to view all the detailed photos and menu at the end.

My tee shirt and jeans kinda gal.....
New tights.....already torn.
New shoes.....already scuffed.

I actually have caught number two son's cold and feel very yucky right now, so I won't type out our entire day's activities or the tea party details. If you would like to view the photos from our Easter and the tea party, click here. If you click on Start Slideshow, it will have music and comments on the top left side. Thanks for visiting.

I need to get another kleenex.

Spring Fling Tea Party (with two puppies & a lonely tutu)

Today is the virtual Spring Fling Tea Party to celebrate the first day of spring that was graciously hosted by fellow blogger Artsymama and apparently is quite the international affair! I am looking forward to visiting all the other participating tea partier blogs to see what they did.

Here is the Spring Fling Tea Party that I created for my daughter and myself. But then "the boys" crashed the party and had to join in the fun. If you would like to view all the photos taken of our tea party, please take a peek - there are some darn cute ones!!

I decided to have our tea party in my daughter's room. Initially I wanted to do it in our backyard, next to our little fountain, but it has been cloudy and chilly - uncommon weather for southern california.

When I designed my daughter's room close to three years ago when I was pregnant with her (after two boys), I was inspired by the colors of this teacup - the "American Beauty" by Royal Albert. I also had visions of us having tea parties in the corner under my favorite chandelier (that I gave a makeover to, another great eBay find). I cannot believe that today is our first official tea party in that corner! Where did the time go? And today she helped me in the kitchen for the first time when I/we made scones. See the gallery of photos to view her with flour everywhere.

So not only is it the first day of spring, it's the first time baking together, and the first time having a tea party in her room!

So after all the preparations were made, I attempted to change Raina into a pink ballet body suit thingy (can you tell she's my only girl - I don't even know the names of the clothing!) and a pink tulle tutu. Kicked and screamed. Wanted NOTHING to do with it, like tulle was scary and evil. It laid on the floor....

But we did have a great time. Here are the details...

On the table: Usually I like to mix things up a bit, use different patterns for the china etc. But with my pink & green theme, I chose to be more matchy-matchy. You can't tell in the photos, but my teacup is the standard size American Beauty and Raina's is the demi size. The flowers in the milk glass vase were cut from the yard - the only thing bloomed. And the pint-sized bunnies were a find from the .99 cent store, stuck in moss in tulip champagne glasses. The serviettes are just cut from fabric with my favorite scallop-edge pinking shears.

On the menu: for savories we ate chicken, grape, apple and pistachio salad sandwiches and cucumber, watercress and cream cheese sandwiches. The homemade scones were almond cream and blueberry scones. For sweets (I purchased from my favorite bakery) lemon bar bites, an almond tart, chocolate dipped strawberries, coconut macaroons, sugar cookies and mini pink cupcakes with green sprinkles. The kids drank sparkling pink lemonade and I drank Garden Party loose leaf tea which has a nice, floral flavor to it with a hint of Earl Grey.

Giving "Puppy" some tea. Puppy is her love-y.

Giving "Sprinkles" some tea. Sprinkles was adopted at her two-year birthday party.

The girls.

The boys crash the tea party. They know a good homemade scone when they smell one.

So thank you Artsymama for inviting and inspiring me to have a tea party on the First Day of Spring!

A Bittersweet Tea Time

My folks will be moving away from San Clemente for about eight months (they are retired and full-time RV'ers), so I took my mom out for tea a couple of days before they left. She loves visiting tearooms (as do I, but find myself way too critical since I am in the biz) so we tried one I have not been to before.

This was also a brave test to see how my two-year old daughter would behave in a tearoom. She is used to being around china (lord knows it's all over our home), but I brought one of our own teacups just in case.

Once our pot of tea arrived, she poured the entire creamer of milk into her cup, along with I think three sugar cubes, I lost count. She stirred properly with the demi spoon. She's also a dunker and dunked her scone in it.

Apparently that was not enough. She added some leaves (see plant behind her) and stirred. By that point I removed it from her reach before she drank the leaves. Overall, it wasn't too bad having her there, and the owner of the tea room was very gracious and didn't mind her juvenile presence.

But like I said, it was a bittersweet tea time with the feeling of mom's soon-to-be departure looming over us.

A Tea-lightful Valentine's Day

Sometimes the mood strikes to do a last-minute tea. In this case, since I had some leftover sandwiches, scones & sweets from the Assoc. of Bridal Consultant's Tea Party & Fashion Show I decided to not let it go to waste on just a solo tea.

So I threw together this little tea table on my "porch" (we don't really have porches in So Cal - my dream house will have a wrap-around porch). I called some of my neighbor girlfriends to come join me, and luckily they were available!

Along with the leftovers I served hot Cream Earl Grey tea, sparkling pink lemonade, chicken salad sandwiches, fruit with pink whip cream, and pink cupcakes -"jolla" a Valentine's Day Tea!

We sat and chatted for quite a while. That's what I love about having tea - it forces you to slow down and enjoy good conversation and good friends. Sometimes the last-minute-don't-fuss get together's are the best!

Click here for photos.