Tea Party

 During May, Adley and I learned about the country of England for her Around the World activities. I figured it was only fitting to organize a tea party to give us a true taste of England! Before Jaden and Cody got out of school for summer break, Adley and I invited Grandma and Grammy to join us for an afternoon tea. Adley was soooo excited to dress up for our special tea. She picked out her dress-up pearls and her Easter dress to wear and even let me curl her hair.

A couple days before the party, Adley helped me make four fascinators using dollar store flowers, headbands, feathers, and loofahs. They prettied up our outfits quite nicely!

We set the table using china place settings that had belonged to my mom's mom, Adley's great grandmother.

I wasn't sure whether or not Adley would actually drink tea for the party, but I set out a wide variety of options for the rest of us anyway. I had apple juice on standby for Adley. :)

Adley was so proud to hand out the fascinators to Grammy and Grandma when they arrived. Both grandmas dressed up so nicely for the event too!

Here is our fancy foursome!

I divided the tea party into three courses. Our first course was fresh fruit cups and cranberry-almond scones with Devonshire cream. While we ate, Adley drew out discussion questions from a jar. We talked about everything from favorite cartoon characters and where we'd most like to travel to the best gifts we've ever received. Adley was so talkative and excited to answer each new question.

The most surprising thing about the tea party was finding out that Adley actually LOVED the tea! As long as the tea was lukewarm, she downed her cup in no time and tried multiple varieties. Who would've guessed?!

For our second course, I served three different kinds of sandwiches-- egg salad, cucumber & cream cheese, and PBJ. The sandwiches were on regular wheat bread as well as pumpernickel. We also had baby carrots and cubed cheese.

Finally, course three was dessert. We had strawberry thumbprint cookies, homemade brownie bites, and chocolate eclairs. I made the treats small so we would feel no guilt about sampling all three dessert types! For each course, we all filled up our tea cups with a new variety of tea.

While enjoying dessert, we played a game of tea party bingo.

We were so thankful that Grandma and Grammy could join us to help make this tea party so special. What a delightful afternoon!