Decor from a Harvest Tea Party

My friend Deberah had beautiful decorations all over the house at our Crossroads Garden Club Harvest Tea Party on Saturday. A vignette like this definitely says "Fall" to me!

For our buffet style tea, Deberah had stacks of teacups waiting in the kitchen. I just love to see a stack of teacups, anywhere, anytime.

And she used several lovely teapots, but I thought this one was most fitting for a garden club tea!

Here's the tea station where guests could prepare their tea just the way they liked it.

Deberah loves to collect vintage linens, and I thought her platter of napkins and silverware looked so very inviting.

Small potted mums were on all the tables, and later we learned we each got to take one home! I also couldn't help admiring this pretty tablecloth ...

... with the palest blue embroidery and drawn thread work. Charming!

My tablemates were Janelle and Rachelle, who were busy here answering questions for a garden trivia game.

The trivia questions, devised by club member Wilma, were a real hit. And he's partially hidden at left in this photo, but I wanted to mention that one of our male club members, Calvin, attended the tea and had a great time!

In fact, I should have asked everyone to look up, but I enjoyed capturing photos of all those heads bent down as everyone eagerly tried to guess the answers. (Can you guess who won the game and received a garden tote as her prize? I did! That was an absolute scream to me, because I am without a doubt the most inexperienced gardener in the group. I heard Deberah tell someone I read a lot of gardening books, and that is true!)

With great food, fun and Fall-themed fellowship, I hope the Harvest Tea Party will become an annual event!

A Harvest Tea Party

On Saturday, I had the delightful opportunity of being a guest at the Harvest Tea Party hosted by members of the Crossroads Garden Club, of which I am a member, at the home of our president, Deberah. With temperatures finally cooling off here in Georgia, this beautifully sunny Saturday was the perfect day for a fall-themed tea party!

Deberah and fellow club members Dianne, Sam (a woman) and Wilma prepared a wonderful spread and served a buffet-style tea that was stylish, tasty and quite filling. I had skipped lunch in anticipation of the 3 p.m. tea, and when I got home I ended up skipping dinner as well. Just look at all these goodies! And I know we're not supposed to covet, but let's just say I very much *admire* Deberah's black and white checkerboard flooring in her kitchen.

The scones, which you see at far right as well as on the tiered servers, were Cranberry Scones Deberah made from a recipe in the July/August 2012 issue of Newnan-Coweta Magazine, which Deberah and I work on together. (She's the art director, I'm the editor.) The scone recipe, by our wonderful food columnist Amelia Adams, is here, and her accompanying essay is well worth a read if you have a moment!

Near the scones were many varieties of toppings, including Whipped Cream, Mock Devonshire Cream, Jam and Pumpkin Butter. And many of us stopped to admire Deberah's elegant Butter Curls. I had to ask how she made them so pretty. She says you let the stick of butter soften a bit, then drag a spoon along the top, making the curls. Must try!

The tea sandwiches were Chicken Salad and also a Cream Cheese, Chive and Cucumber sandwich.

There were tasty Lemon Tea Cakes, and of course I've been meaning to make Tea Cakes forever but have yet to try them!

There were Chocolate Truffles, and I went back to the kitchen to nab one after I realized I'd failed to add one to my plate. Two other ladies were reaching for them as well!

Deberah is a wonderful cake baker, and I must say this Caramel-Glazed Pear Cake was my favorite item, although everything I ate was simply scrumptious!

In addition to four different varieties of hot tea (Ceylon, Pumpkin Ginger, Peach and a Rooibos), there was a large punch bowl full of Cranberry Lemonade (at left). I actually sipped cold Cranberry Lemonade right along with my Pumpkin Ginger hot tea and enjoyed them both immensely! You can also see, to the right of the Lemon Tea Cakes, a tray of Brownie Bites. Nice and fudgey, just the way I like 'em! The lavish fruit bowl, at back, featured strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries

My plate is here. Hungry yet? And now I'm in great danger of afflicting you with image overload, so if you'll come back tomorrow I'll share some of the great teawares, linens and decor from the Harvest Tea Party!

Teatime Giveaway #37 - Citrus & Black Tea Soap

The winner of the magnetic notepad from last week is Amber S., so congrats! If you'll send me your snail mail address via the e-mail button at right, I'll get this headed your way. And for this week's giveaway, I wanted to share one of the yummy new soaps I got at the beach last week!

This soap is by L’épi de Provence in France, and I have been using mine all week and love it! The citrus scent is very refreshing, and it's also got some of those nice exfoliating bits in it, too. If you'd like a chance to win, just leave an "Enter me" to this post anytime between now and Friday, Sept. 21. Good luck!

Congratulations, Arnold Palmer!

Since it's technically summer for a few more days, I purchased what I imagine is my last box of iced tea "stix" for the season. This time I tried the peach flavor of the Arnold Palmer Half & Half, a drink that's half sweet tea and half lemonade.

I enjoy adding these to bottled water when I'm on the go, and the Arnold Palmer peach flavor gets two thumbs up from me. It had a pleasant fruity taste and was devoid of that chemical taste I have found in powdered tea mixes before. If these are around next summer, I'll be buying them again.

Arnold Palmer, of course, is the famous golfer who is also known for his love of the half tea/half lemonade drink now known simply as "an Arnold Palmer." I've even made Arnold Palmer Cupcakes before, and boy, were they good! On Wednesday, Palmer was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, and became just the sixth athlete to receive the award. (The others, according to ABC News, were "track Olympian Jesse Owens, baseball hall of famers Roberto Clemente and Jackie Robinson, boxing icon Joe Louis and fellow golfer Byron Nelson.") Palmer is also known for his charitable work and philanthropy, and I liked that when accepting the award during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol, he joked that he is “particularly proud of anything that the House and the Senate agree on.” And so I happily lift my bottle of Arnold Palmer to … Arnold Palmer!

Honey in my tea

Honey, can we talk? I'm betting I'm not the only allergy sufferer who is a tea drinker. Now spring allergies don't bother me a bit anymore, and I can practically bathe in yellow pollen and won't sneeze a bit. Fall is another story, and so I'm trying adding local honey to my tea.

I'd been meaning, for years now, to get some from the Exners, local beekeepers known for their great honey. I had gone to visit my friend Liz at her store in Senoia, Cydney's Alley, and as I sat there and blabbed with her, I was quite drowsy from the allergy tablets I'd taken. It so happened that a couple of customers came in and started asking about the honey she had on display. "Honey? You have honey? Where from?" Yep, it was from the Exners, so I took that as a definite sign I was supposed to leave with some! I don't usually sweeten my tea, so I added just about a teaspoonful. It made my Whittard's Breakfast Earl Grey taste even better than usual, but I wondered if that is enough to see "benefits." So if any of you are allergy-afflicted and sipping and/or eating honey from your area, I would welcome your advice.

Of course while I was at Liz's shop I had to browse the antiques. I saw this wonderful old aqua blue Avon glass jar, and naturally I decided I needed it for ...

... The Beach Cottage. Another advantage I see to life at the beach? No ragweed!

Tea and the Sea

With fall mere weeks away, it is perhaps impractical to engage in sea-themed decorating since pumpkin patches and apple festivals are just around the corner. But you know what? I don't care! The older I get, the easier I find it to ignore the usual rules! So, the purchase of a new aqua-colored candle and some seaglass inspired me to create a little vignette as a reminder of my most recent trip to the beach.

Now, may I just say that some of the best purchases I've ever made are clear glass accessories, like this apothecary type jar. It's held tea bags and ribbons and, most recently, small colorfully packaged soaps. Here, I poured seaglass in the base, added my aqua candle—which I got just because the color of the glass was so pretty—and filled in the sides with seashells picked up from the beach last week. How easy! When fall arrives, it occurred to me, I might substitute an unscented candle in a fall color and fill in the base and sides with candy corn. Plus, that will give me an excuse to buy more candy corn! (Did y'all know there are now CANDY CORN M&M's in stores? I *might* have bought a bag of them this week …)

Everything else in this photo, I already had. The metal star was hanging in the living room, which now has a bare spot. Too bad!

The shell teapot is a piece I hot-glued together after a beach trip a few years back, and the conch shell artwork was among my sixth anniversary goodies from my sweet husband earlier this month.

The button teapot is another little doodad I crafted a while back. Hmmm. I clearly have a thing for hot-glue projects.

That teacup I wrote about yesterday? Well, it gets the addition of a feather I found on the beach, from a seagull or sandpiper, I guess. The blue makes such a nice background for it.

And, of course, shells. Love, love, love me some seashells. I find beauty in the shapes of the "perfect" ones as well as the "imperfect" ones, which I like to think of as Shabby Chic seashells. While at the beach, I picked up a wonderful book called "Waterside Cottages" by Barbara Jacksier and Dan Mayers. In one of the many delightful photographs, a cottage owner had set up a tea table with the sea as the backdrop. Can you imagine taking tea in such a setting? I can!

Antiquing at the beach

You have to love an antique mall that has a 50-percent off room, and the Old Armory Antique Mall in Foley, Ala. does. There I found this "Southend on Sea" teacup for $8, so it was $4. This piece, you see, is the first thing I've bought to go in my beach cottage. While I do not in fact have a beach cottage just yet, I've decided to go ahead and start collecting for it now. It will (Lord willing and one day!) be furnished in those pretty watery blues and greens we associate with the sea, and this teacup and saucer look a little dark in my photo but are a nice clear, cloudless-sky kind of blue. The backstamp tells me the pieces were made by Devon Pottery in England, and Southend on Sea is a seaside resort in Essex, England. I *must* have England represented in the beach cottage, don't you think? And bone china will be too "precious" to use there, I imagine, so this sort of teacup is just perfect.

My favorite find at that antique mall, however, was two goodies I have wanted for simply years: porcelain egg coddlers. If you want to know more about egg coddlers, click here for a great introduction. These rose egg coddlers are by Royal Worcester. When I saw these two marked a reasonable $12 each, and then with an extra 30% off sticker, I was very happy.

When I screwed off the lids to make sure they worked properly, and they did, I was amused to find inside one of them a receipt showing that the antique mall vendor got an even better deal than I did! Somebody paid just $2.50 apiece for these at the Waterfront Rescue Mission, a nearby thrift store, back on Aug. 22, 2012. Wish I'd gotten to them first--but I still got a good deal, so I can't complain. (And I'll let you know when I've made my first coddled eggs and tea for breakfast!)

Do any of you collect Lefton's Christmas holly pattern dishes? I do, now. Starting with this piece found for $1 at a flea market in Elberta, Ala.

It even has the original Lefton sticker on it!

Also in Elberta, I found a book ($1) about making quilts out of vintage handkerchiefs. Remember when my parents gave me that box of 71 a few months ago? Apparently it takes just 7 or so to make a hanky panky quilt. I think I'm good to go!

And while in Seaside earlier in the week, I came across some gorgeous bracelets made of vintage clip-on earrings, but I wasn't going to pay $50+ for something I could make myself. The Elberta flea market turned up these beauties in my beachy color palette for just $3. Soon, I expect to have a new bracelet to wear to teatime and other frou-frou occasions.

And those are all the "antique" goodies from this year's seaside travels. These are definitely my favorite kind of travel souvenirs, but at this rate, the beach cottage is going to take a while to furnish!

A week at the beach

Finally, I got to take some much-needed vacation time at the beach last week, and oh, did I ever enjoy it! After a busy summer at the office I was more than ready for some R&R, and my husband and I agreed this was one of the best, most relaxing weeks we've ever had! Thanks to some thoughtful friends, our base was a wonderful condo in Orange Beach, Ala., which placed us in a great area for visiting quite a few nearby coastal towns. Another advantage of going after Labor Day, of course, is that it's a little cooler and the crowds have died down a bit. Perfect!

One day, we drove over to another of our favorite coastal towns, Seaside, since a) we haven't visited in a couple of years and b) I am writing a mystery novel set there, so I needed to do some research. If you haven't been to this area, I highly recommend a visit to the Grayton Beach/Seaside/Seagrove Beach/Rosemary Beach area. Lovely, lovely, lovely! In Seaside, there's a sweet cottage-y feel to the homes, many of which evoke memories of Victorian neighborhoods of yesteryear. Many of the homes have signage telling you the names of the owners and where they are from. I liked the name of this one, Amazing Grace!

And isn't it appropriate to name a peach-colored home Freckles?

This home, Caribbean, earns its name.

And I very much loved the name of this one, Seaquel. I sure hope a writer lives there!

This home was either under construction or renovation, and I absolutely adored the rounded design of the first and second floor porches. Imagine how fun that would be to decorate!

We popped into the charming Seaside Chapel for a visit, and it's on my Bucket List to actually attend a service there one Sunday when I'm nearby.

At dinnertime, we headed to the rooftop of Bud & Alley's for some great seafood and even greater views.

As I browsed in the quaint shops that day, I thought I was going to leave the town tea-free, until I came across the yummiest smelling Citrus & Black Tea French soaps. Oh my goodness, the scent is just divine! Later in the week, I went to an antique mall or two (OK, technically it was a dozen, but who's counting?), and tomorrow if you're game I'll share some of my tea-related treasures!