Valentine's Tea

I had a Valentine's dessert tea today for 3 of my dear friends from our local civic Women's Club. One of the ladies is the founder of the club (and also a neighbor.) The other two are the lovely ladies who took over Hospitality when I "passed the baton."

This little tea was just my way of telling them "thank you" for taking over and for doing such a wonderful job......it is not an easy task to do well.

I used a sweet simple rose and grey-green leaved china set and pink Depression glass plates and matching goblets. For visual illusion of "chargers" I used die-cut scrapbook paper - to give a nice look of having more layers without the bulk. I didn't use dinner plates for this simple dessert tea, so chargers would have been out of place and much too large. This did the trick perfectly!

A beautiful small heart-shaped server my friend Deb gave me fits the occassion perfectly!

Dessert teas are such an easy and fun way of entertaining (and great excuse to use your pretty china!)Plan on serving a minimum of three sweets - or just one big Wow 'Em Splurge such as a big tall piece of cake, a fancy-with-all-the-bells-n-whistles cheesecake or an amazing pie a la mode. 

For today's tea I simply provided frosted brownies, raspberry jam almond tea cookies (heart shapes in the cookie for the jam portion) and mini red velvet cupcakes with whipped buttercream icing. Serving finger foods eliminates the need for forks, thus making it even easier to host a tea! (I did end up grabbing dessert forks after we began because of that extra high buttercream icing required a fork, haha.) I am just glad the forks were recently shined, so it was a fast save!

Last year I was struggling with trying to get my heart shapes to work for these cookies. Next thing I know here comes my DH with a wooden "punch" he made with two different sizes for the hearts depending on what size cookie I was making. He amazes me.

I served Red Roobios tea with pink heart decorated sugar cubes in keeping with the red and pink theme. When the sugar melts it takes the little pink heart a little longer to melt. It's fun to watch my guests' faces when they have a sweet pink heart floating in their red tea. It is quite festive!

I used a pretty tea cosy to keep our tea piping hot.

For favors I gave them each rose petal soap flakes in a heart shaped box.

I *highly* encourage you to host a first tea or coffee social............or have yourself another soon if it's been a long while. Ladies just love an excuse to get together, and we absolutely need one another for the "sisterly" love and support only another female can understand and give. We love our sweets, we love using pretty things like fine china, and more than anything we love keeping our friendships alive and growing. One of the best ways to keep an old friendship dear, nurture and encourage a budding new friendship, or even to mend an injured friendship  is to have a tea!

So plan to slow yourself down just a little,  put your kettle on - and invite a friend or two over, and keep your precious friendships alive!

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Heading on over to visit Bernideen for her Tea Party Link Fest!

Joining Susan at BNOTP for Tablescape Thursday!