Every little girl spends hours playing “tea party”… and I’ve just discovered why. High tea celebrations offer hours of fun for ladies (both little and grown up) who love an excuse to pull out the finery, play in the kitchen and then dress up for a leisurely afternoon of chatting, nibbling, and of course sipping tea.
While a high tea serves up a terrific party theme for most any occasion, my gal pals and I raised our tea cups to fittingly celebrate our English-Australian mommy friend who is about to give birth to a baby girl. Join in our fun through a quick photo tour of what turned out to be a fabulous baby shower, and consider hosting a similar celebration for your friends and family.
The Menu
Hostess, Sono-Ma Annalyce La Source, put together a savory and sweet menu of classic high tea finger foods:
Tea Sandwiches: Cucumber and Salmon
Lemon Bars (and Lemon Rosemary Button Cookies – not pictured)
Generous family members and friends added to the decadent menu with confections like cupcakes, Tomato and Onion Galettes
as well as Scones and Devonshire Cream.
Pampering Mommy
While a high tea theme helped direct most of the activities for the party, hostess Annalyce also wanted to shower our mother of honor with some special attention. Thinking this new mom would love a soothing massage treatment, Annalyce called on Leslie Gude of Bellies n Bloom. The gals pooled together to purchase a future body therapy session for the new mama. Inspired to bring a bit of instant pampering to the tea party, Annalyce also hired Leslie to provide on the spot body work.
While our honored guest enjoyed her foot soak and massage, the rest of passed around the creams, lotions, and potions sold by Bellies n Bloom. Leslie offers treatments for mothers of all ages and stages, and I think many of us have plans to book a session with Bellies n Bloom! (Look for a feature store about this fabulous mom-owned and mom-focused boutique on Sono-Ma soon.)
The Games
Silly games (think pin the ovaries on the uterus or dropping clothes pins into a bottle using your knees) were out with a classy high tea theme. We chose instead to play a guessing game: “Who is the baby?” Crowding around old photographs of ourselves as children, the aim was to guess which little girl or infant’s photograph matched up with each guest.
The winner – who miraculously correctly guessed each picture’s owner – took home a bath fizzer from our local Sebastopol Sumbody shop. That lady is sure to keep the decadent moments flowing with her special home spa treatment.
The Take-home Gifts
I volunteered to take on the fun project of making the take home gifts. With a few garden items, free vintage ephemera, my sewing machine, and my friend at Peters’ Chocolates, each guest took home a collection of fun tea party themed treats.
To read more about how to create you own tea party take home gifts, read this article featured as a part of the new Sono-Ma Crafts collection.
Sono-Ma Celebrations
Do you have a party idea you’d like to share that features local, hand made, creative and fun elements? We’d love to hear about it! If we decide to post your idea as part of the official Sono-Ma Celebration we’ll thank you with a special gift. January’s gift pack includes Shikai’s all natural moisturizing shower gels in both vanilla and pomegranate scents.
3 Comments
Wow! What fabulous ideas! Where DID you find devonshire cream? Not that I can eat it anymore but yum yum. And I really love the match a baby photo with adult idea. Much better than tasting baby food or swinging grapefruits about in panty hose.
Ill certainly enter pics from Phineas’s garden birthday party. Where do I do that? Should I email them to you?
Glad you liked this, Sharon!
The Devonshire cream was home made – you can do it too.
Sono-Ma is looking for your stories, ideas, and photos for our Celebrations contest. Simply email them to holly@sono-ma.com. Thanks!
The Mother of a friend of mine passed away recently. We live in Hawaii and the friend and her mother were the only relatives who lived here, so the funeral was going to be very small or not at all. A clrcle of girlfriends wanted to help our friend honor her sweet mother, and offered to have a Tea Party in her honor after the Mass. We thought the group might be as small as eight people, but as it turned out, 26 people were in attendance, including the hospice nurse and counselors and the service priest. I collect “tea party ware”, so amazing to myself, I had service for 26, all vintage cups and saucers! Lace table clothes, cloth napkins, vintage plates and flowery service ware. We had three teas, tea sandwiches, scones, dipped strawberries, candied ginger and mini tarts. We made angel magnets from clay (we are all potters) as favors and set up a lovely table of photographs on a lace table cloth with flowers and the favors. Everyone was delighted with the lovely table that reflected the lovely feminine lady who had passed. The priest commented that it had been ages since he had drank out of a cup and saucer! The guests stayed for two hours sitting down and visiting and remembering Margaret. It was the perfect send off for a lovely lady!
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