Category: Musings

This past week, I had a small get together in my home for a few friends. I talk a lot about tea, so my friends know that I’m a bit of a tea enthusiast. When the idea of a tea party was suggested, I was like “Umm, yes!”. I am in no way an “expert” on hosting tea parties or afternoon tea, but I had a lot of fun from planning, shopping, decorating, and setting everything up. I shared a lot of photos in my Instagram Stories (@onemoresteep) on the day of and the days following, so I wanted to share some more photos – along with answering some questions that I’ve been getting about what was featured.

I definitely went with an autumn theme. I did not break the bank on this one – I swear!

Each setting had a small, white pumpkin. I bought a bag of six at a local grocery store for $3.00. They’re just so adorable – one of my guests had the great idea of hollowing out her tiny pumpkin to fit a tea light. I had a couple leftover after the party and I gave one to my mom for her desk at work (she thought it was just the cutest thing).

My patterned tea set (consists of the teapot, sugar bowl, cream, four cups with saucers) was from Amazon by Gracie China by Coastline Imports in the Dahlia pattern. The full set is no longer being sold by Amazon, but you can still get the cups and saucers.

The silver rose teaspoons are also a purchase from Amazon, I love the floral detailing so much. I’ve had them in photos before on my Instagram account, I feel just a bit extra fancy stirring my tea with a rose teaspoon.

The autumn leaves paper napkins and the red felt maple leaf are both dollar store purchases. One of my guests had seen the felt maple leaf at a big box store (and I saw them at a popular arts & crafts chain store) for a lot more – I paid $1.25 at a dollar store while the arts & crafts store had them for $8.99.

The 3 tier stand is glass and stainless steel and it was a purchase from Ikea (KVITTERA) for the low, low price of $12.99. I feel like I’ll put on enough tea parties in the future to make the purchase completely worth it. It can be taken apart to store flat (which was one of the huge pros to buying it). It’s a decent size too, and had enough room to hold enough food for four people.

For the food, I put sandwiches at the bottom and at the top were the sweets.

Everyone got three varieties of sandwiches. All of them had an avocado-cream cheese mixture. The first was avo-cream cheese with cucumber; the second was the same as the first, just added shrimp; and the third was avo-cream cheese, tomato, and shrimp.

The middle tier was quiche – I had ham & cheese, and spinach quiche. The top tier was chocolate cupcakes.

I opted to go fairly traditional with the tea, and I served an organic Earl Grey (from DavidsTea).

Not pictured are the goodie bags that I had for my guests as well. It was both an opportunity for me to share the love of tea and to destash some of my tea surplus. I have an amazing amount of tea, as one could assume, so I put together some goodie bags of both loose and bagged teas, along with some stainless steel infusers to make steeping the loose tea a little bit easier.