Christmas Tea with My Sister & Friends!

On Saturday, my very special guests for tea were my sweet sister Rhonda and some of her high school friends. Here are, from left, Rhonda, Anslea, Tina, Rachel and Angie. These "little girls" I once knew have grown up to become such beautiful (and fun!) young women.

And just because we rarely seem to have our picture made together, here are me and Rhonda. I was on Facebook one night back in October when I saw an interesting discussion develop. One of the girls told Rhonda wouldn't it be fun if they all came to *my* house for their annual Christmas party this year and if I hosted a tea for them! I grinned when I saw their comments, but of course I chimed in and told them I'd be glad to do it, because a) I love any excuse for a tea party! and b) I can't think of anything I wouldn't do for my sister if she wanted me to. (If you're blessed to have the kind of sister I do, you know just what I mean!)


Here are some photos of the table before we tucked into the food. I forgot to get closeups of the teapots, but that's OK because we had two Christmas teas that were new to me, and I'll tell you about them later this week because they were quite well received!

So what did we eat? Well, first of course were the scones, served with jam and whipped cream. I made two kinds, Currant Scones and White Chocolate & Almond Scones. I love using my Nordic Ware pan that makes 16 mini scones, because guests will try both flavors if I keep the scones small.

Rhonda insisted on helping make some of the sandwiches, and when I saw (and tasted) hers, I was glad. She made these cute Egg Salad Sandwiches in Christmas tree shapes with olive slices for ornaments. Pretty!

She also made her Chicken Salad Sandwiches using these soft, delicious brown rolls. I love Chicken Salad but it is always the most time-consuming thing to make, so I was lucky she volunteered for these!

I made the Olive-Walnut Spread Sandwiches (in wreath shapes) and Cucumber and Dill Sandwiches (in triangles).

On this tree-shaped tiered server you can see we also had the Ham Salad Sandwiches I wrote about here on Saturday. And for our sweets, on the bottom tier, we had Lemon Madeleines and this Cranberry Bread.

My mother contributed this Christmas green plate of her famous Divinity. It truly is some heavenly stuff!

I also decided we needed more chocolate so I served these Cappuccino Crinkle cookies. So easy, so delicious.

And last but not least, we had White Chocolate & Raspberry Mini-Trifles! I had been eager to try serving something in these little glasses like I've seen in Tea Time magazine. When Ross had a set of 8 (with matching teaspoons) on sell for just $5.49 recently, I took it as a sign. These really seemed to be a hit, and I liked the small size — especially after all the other yummy stuff on our menu. To make them, I simply layered grocery store pound cake, this white chocolate filling recipe and fresh raspberries. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and I so loved being able to enjoy a Christmas teatime with my sister and her sweet friends!