i LOVE going to tea, and i feel like it’s been sort of a recurring theme in my life ever since i was a wee one. it all started with birthday parties at chelsea’s tea room, which was pretty much a little girl’s dreamworld of dress-up clothes and makeup and tea parties, and with the tea parties that i’d have with my brother or cousins on the back porch of mimi and papa’s house in pascagoula. mimi would pour chocolate milk into the teacups of the plastic pink tea set that was ours to play with while we were at her house, and she would serve us grapes and cookies and strawberries with tiny bowls of sugar to dip them in.
{at chelsea’s tea room at age 4}
{tea parties at mimi’s on the back porch. and that huge gap in my teeth and mike’s sweaty head from playing hard outside! i die.}
i remember my mom helping me throw a little tea party for my friend brittni and our dolls when we were 6 or 7. we made doll-sized treats for the party and picked roses from the garden for the centerpiece and mom even let us use our fancy glass plates that she reserved for parties. we sat at our coffee table with our dolls pulled up to the table on old encyclopedias stacked up on child-sized chairs.
when i was 10, i went to my first real high tea with mimi at windsor court in new orleans. it was a magical experience for me, and the funniest thing was that i was so excited about the whole event that i wrote down everything they brought out for each course so i wouldn’t ever forget. i still have that paper and it’s humorous to see, “first course: scones with clotted cream, strawberry jam, and lemon curd,” etc. in my ten-year-old handwriting, mostly because that’s so me, even to this day. always wanting to record everything so i’ll never forget it.
and then there was american girl place in chicago, where mimi would take my cousin ashlin and me every year when we went to visit her and papa at the farm. we would dress like our dolls, and they got to sit with us at the table in special chairs which we thought was totally cool.
{even when i decided that i was too old to bring my doll, i still loved going to american girl place and having tea. such a fun experience!}
i was lucky to get to go to high tea at harrods in london with the moms and daughters of my soccer team in junior high – SUCH fun – and then the same group of moms and daughters got together for tea at merry heart tea room in the town square of granbury every year at christmastime for several years in a row.
and now we have a holiday tradition of going to high tea with mom and mimi [and any other girls in our family that happen to be in town at the time], which we have been doing since i was in high school. we’ve always gone to the ashton hotel in fort worth right before christmas, but this year, we decided have tea in dallas at the rosewood crescent hotel, and we were a little late to get reservations so we ended up going right after new years. it was just lovely to spend time with them and dress up and be fancy for a few hours. :)
{a glass of champagne with a raspberry and my own pot of lady caroline tea… what more could a girl want?!}
{cucumber, chicken salad, egg salad, smoked salmon, and tuna sandwiches for all}
{i’ve had a fair share of scones in my life, but these were some of the very best. also, those berries and that honey butter…}
{creme brûlée, hazelnut mousse cake, lemon tart, and chocolates for each of us!}
pinkies up! :)