The party favor. I don't even remember what options I considered, there were many. In the end I settled on paper flowers made out of heavier two sided scrapbooking paper. I also decided to make them into magnets rather than putting them on to floral wire. This save a pretty good amount of time. Recently I requested a book on paper flowers and had already planned to do a program on how to make them. I realized while creating a couple of flowers for the program that I could use them as the party favor and advertize for my program next Monday evening at the same time.
Then came the food for the program. Thankfully my former supervisor Josie let me know through the grapevine that she would make me some of her famous lemon squares and brownies. I gladly took her up on the offer. I wanted to do something a bit different from my usual fare of Sam's Club mini quiches and a couple of other frozen nuke and serve dishes. This time I roasted some mini potatoes and then threaded them onto skewers with mini tomatoes and then popped them back into the oven for a bit. I also found a fast recipe for haricot vert (French green beans). At first I planned to grate carrots, and cucumbers and then add cranberries and mint for a refreshing spring salad but on the day of I realized that the carrots were too thin to grate so I improvised, cut them into large matchsticks and sauteed them with butter and brown sugar. I garnished them with fresh mint. Of course I made tea sandwiches but to add a little bit of variety I made (or rather had the volunteers make) grilled ham & Colby cheese sandwiches.
I bought a mini tea cake pan that I wanted to try out. I had the thought I might have time to do them up proper but in the end Friday night after picking up last minute ingredients I didn't have time to make the glaze for them. The recipe that came with the pan was a little bit too thick and I ended up with overflow that I had to cut off and bubbles, but they were cute. Instead of the glaze, I just dusted them with brown sugar. By the end of the tea, there was one lone potato and one tiny tea cake left on the table. So I am assuming that it was all pretty good or maybe I just didn't make enough!
I had fully planned to make a variety of scones for the tea but a night in kitty emergency (I will elaborate in the next entry)threw my timing off. But fortunately, my adult volunteer contributed scones for the fete.
The biggest success was the punch. I don't know where I got the punch recipe, I have been using it for a while now but everyone loved it and asked for the recipe. I used one can each of frozen orange, pineapple and lemonade concentrate thawed. I added two bottles of lemon lime soda--this time I used Squirt because it was on sale and then added about half to three quarters cup of grenadine to give it a nice hue. I added ice and water to fill up the punch carafe.
For entertainment I told stories that I titled "Stories My Mother Told". I talked a bit about growing up with bedtime stories that my mother wove for my and my brother. She would call Nightmare the luminous dapple gray horse to our bedside and take us to Nappies Town where we would run into literary creatures such as the Owl and the Pussy Cat, the Gumdrop Tree with the Chocolate Cat and Gingerbread Dog. We would always end our visit with milk and cookies at the Wise Old Owl's house where we could ask one question. I also talked about the time my mother sewed up the Easter Bunny when he fell and hurt himself on the barbed wire fence. My mother took the broken eggs off his hands for our baskets. I then told them that I host the Mother Daughter Tea in honor of my mother because I think she is an amazing person. I believe that my love for literature, librarianship and travel stem from those early bedtime adventures sprinkled with literary references that required no passport.
The last portion of the program is a free raffle. I collect little gifts either from donations or things that I pick up fairly inexpensively. I give each attendee three slips of paper, they write their name on the slips and then they place the slips in the the cups next to the prize they would like to win. At the end of the program I draw out the winning names. It is fun. This year the big prize was a Disney gift with a Tinkerbell butterfly shaped bag filled with a Cinderella Barbie and a fairy necklace. The daughters of the mother who won the prize almost came to blows over who got what. So again, I will assume that it was a success.
Now I need to start planning the winter tea party!
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