Bluebird Tea

One of the things my daughter and I really enjoy is afternoon tea. My son joins us occasionally depending on the food selection, but it's really not his cup of tea. (I think that is my first ever pun!).

We first started taking tea when my friend, Tina, and her family introduced us to the concept. She also introduced us to the wonderful world of Jane Austen. I guess God gave me some cultured friends to add a little refinement to our lives since it was...lacking.

Sometimes our families get together for tea parties, though with four busy teenagers between us that's a little difficult these days. At times the teas have been very simple fare and at other times we've had high tea which includes meaty dishes like chicken salad and quiche. Whatever we do it's just fun to take a little respite from the world around us and enjoy each other, but as I said, we haven't been able to swing it much lately with their family.

So I decided that my daughter and I would just have to carry on the tradition just the two of us. And in addition we've started nature journaling, another thing I knew very little about, a new concept introduced by yet another cultured friend, Beth.

We have no specific agenda, but we do plan to have some themed teas because we're just funky people that like to make themes for everything. This is a picture of our first themed tea: a bluebird tea.

Can you guess why we called it that? I picked up those adorable little dishes on our way back from Amish country last year. They were on deep discount at Cracker Barrel, which seems to be a great place to locate tea pots and such.

Our menu included store bought blueberry muffins and fresh strawberries. We thought about having blueberry tea in keeping with the blue theme, but we weren't sure we would like it so we opted for the tangerine orange zinger sun tea we'd made the day before. Cold tea in a pot for hot tea- works for us.

The plan was to do some bird watching and drawing. Every time I think of bird watching Jane Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies comes to mind. When I was a kid I swore I'd never bird watch just because I didn't want to be like Jane. But here I am all grown up watching birds and probably more like Jane than I'd care to admit.

Anyway, nary a bird came nigh, so my daughter drew the front and back of a lamb's ear leaf from our natural area, which is very natural at present. I drew the strawberry on my plate. Now I remember why I never became an artist, but I did see a lot of intricate details about strawberries that I'd never noticed before.

I will continue to share our little impromptu tea parties from time to time, but if you are really interested in tea you must check out this awesome site that was recommended to me by Sandy. As we say down south, that site makes me happier than a pig in poop. At least that's my refined opinion on the issue!