High Tea Birthday

For my birthday we hosted our families at a lovely morning tea. I had envisaged a relaxed and beautiful morning chatting with family over tea and scones. I envisaged the guests arriving to find a table filled with flowers, beautiful bone china tea cups, piping hot pots of tea brewing and dessert towers filled with mouth-watering delicacies.

That wasn't quite what the guests arrived to...

The table was partially set with flowers and tea cups and looked stunning.

However, the towers were empty and the kitchen was a war zone. The baby was screaming, the 2 year old was sheepishly hiding after tipping an entire tea pot of flowers and water all over the freshly laid children's table and having earlier broken a porcelain tea spoon, and the 4 year old was sulking about having to clean up the playroom for our guests. I hadn't brushed my hair, cleaned my teeth or managed to put on any jewelry.

Thankfully the guests flew into action upon arrival. G-G nursed the screaming baby and put her to sleep (the magic touch). Pop finished grilling the vegetables for the sandwiches. Nan and the Aunts stacked the dessert towers with the aforementioned delicacies (most of which they had craftily created themselves) warmed quiches and helped make the sandwiches. Someone put on the kettle and made tea. The cousins distracted the children and ran outside to play. Phew!

The table was set and we finally sat down for the most decadent High Tea! It was exactly what I had envisaged...

I loved picking the different camellia's from my garden for the table decorations and used old tea tins (now residing in the children's play kitchen) as vases. I used these tins as vases when I hosted a High Tea for my sister's baby shower over a year ago and got many compliments, so I recycled the idea. I discovered I have 6 different varieties and colours of camellia in my front garden - white, blush pink, light pink, dark pink, fuchsia, and fuschia with white spots! I am loving my winter garden. We even used the children's play teapot for a vase on the children's table.

My Mother-In-Law has a beautiful eclectic collection of fine china tea cups which looked beautiful on the table,  along with some of my sister and mine Limoges Legle tea cups, and my Grandmothers bone china teapot.

The children's table was set with the Royal Dalton cups and plates which my boys received for their Christenings and 1st Birthdays. The children all enjoyed baby-chino's, quiches, gravadlax, chocolate waffer sticks, macaroons and meringues. Not to forget the gingerbread men the boys made with their Dad the morning of (these may, or may not, have been the reason for much of the chaos when everyone arrived...).

All up it was a beautiful day. We stuffed ourselves silly and loved every moment.

So what was on the menu?

A lot of the above was made by my talented mother, sisters and mother-in-law. My husband made the house-cured gravadlax, and my creation was the sandwich.

Char-Grilled Vegetable Ciabatta with Marinated Goat Cheese and Avocado.

The ingredients:
3 Zucchini, sliced thinly
1 Jap Pumpkin, deseeded and sliced thinly
4 Red Capsicum, deseeded and sliced
3 Avocados
Goat Cheese (we used a marinated peppered balls goat cheese which was marinated in lemon and pepper).
Sourdough Ciabatta Load

The recipe:
Toss vegetables with olive oil, salt and pepper and lay on grill of BBQ. Turn after several minutes and grill for a further 3 minutes.
Slice ciabatta thinly, spread goat cheese on one slice and avocado on another.
Layer vegetables on top of goat cheese and top avocado slice. Slice in half.
Makes 14 half sandwiches.

The result:
Delicious, fresh and creamy.

I wish I had a photo to show how gorgeous these sandwiches looked but alas I do not - they were eaten too quickly! (Saved by my sister who snapped this photo).

Tune back in for my husbands Gravadlax recipe in a couple of days.

Do you enjoy entertaining? Are you ever prepared when people begin arriving?

4th Birthday Morning Tea

Yesterday, Noah turned 4! It is hard to even describe how fast the last 4 years have gone, but then if you are a parent you understand this phenomena. Last year for his 3rd birthday we held a huge firetruck party, with all the trimmings. This year was a quieter affair, and we decided on just inviting our family to share in Noah's celebration. With everyone so busy at this time of year, we decided a morning tea still allowed everyone to get to their other commitments for the silly season. And so it was that we hosted a high tea of sorts for our 4 year old son!

Our menu included a cheese platter, a fruit platter, a bowl of berries (Noah was so impressed to find this included blackberries - which are hard to come by here in Sydney and super expensive when you do find them), oreo truffles, hazelnut truffles (for my gluten-intolerant mum), fresh baked scones (baked by my handy hubby from my Nana's recipe), tea and coffee. It was a delicious spread for  a warm, and slightly muggy, summer morning.

Of course, there was also cake. Noah had been telling anyone who asked that he was having a "Bob-The-Builder" party for his birthday. So running with that theme for the cake, I set about deciding on a cake. I saw this pin describing "super fancy cake decorating...that would make [me] look pretty clever" - hard to resist right? So I picked a simple drawing of Bob, and set about making my buttercream icing and drawing the cake decal to place on top of the cake. And I think it turned out pretty damn good. We had a minor arm amputation and some running of the icing due to the hot weather, but it looked good and tasted great.

Noah was certainly pretty excited to see Bob on top of his cake!

After much candle blowing and lots of eating and playing it was time to say bye to Noah's birthday for another year. No doubt the next year will fly by just as quickly!

High Tea Baby Sprinkle

Way back in May I hosted a small intimate Baby Sprinkle for my sister who was expecting her second baby, an adorable little boy, Aidan, who was born with a full head of gorgeous black hair just like his big brother.

As I live in a small townhouse, we were very limited on numbers, so we decided to host a High Tea with just family. Pinterest, immediately became my source of inspiration and it did not disappoint for invitations, for menu options and for decoration ideas.

We decided our menu would have a mix of savory and sweet - bruchetta, smoked salmon roulettes, mini sandwiches and quiches, macaroons, mini lemon meringue tarts, mini scandinavian almond cakes, mini chocolate hazelnut tarts, ANZAC slice and rum balls. My Mum, sister and I had a huge cooking day before the shower to have all the food prepared, and I was making decorations for about 4 weeks before the sprinkle. We had a huge range of teas on offer - black, green, raspberry and lime, nougat. It really was a smorgasbord of tea and so I created some cute little "tea-bag" labels for the teapots describing each of the teas.

I was so lucky to borrow from my mother-in-law her beautiful bone china teacups and saucers. Some were hers, some her sister's, some her mother's, and even some her grandmother's! Together with some beautiful lace tablecloths and napkins, and some bone china platters and teapots I borrowed from my grandmother, the table looked stunning. I loved the mismatch of gorgeous bone china teacups, the mix of lace and linen, and the used tea tins for vases.

I had imagined hydrangeas and orchids for decorations, but instead found some gorgeous roses and peonies, which turned out stunning. Paper pom poms, twine wrapped vases, and a photo-line of guests baby photos formed the rest of the decorations.

We had some great favor bags for guests which included little jars of home-made lemon butter, curash baby samples and a small tub of delicious niyama maychang ylang body butter. They were pretty awesome favor bags, if I do say so myself!

We asked guests to bring a book to add to the Baby's library in lieu of traditional baby gifts, given that Shey already had most baby gear from her first son, Elliot. Shey went home with a treasure-trove of classic children's books, a bag of baby-products, lemon butter and body butter, and a wonderful afternoon of memories. All up it was a wonderful afternoon of women celebrating Shey and her soon to-be second baby. Great food, great teas, and great company. What could be better!