It's Tea Time-Part 2

If you missed my "It's Tea Time" post on Saturday you will have to go check it out! 

So did you get to watch it last night?!  Season 2 of Downton Abbey?  Oh it was good!  I will not give it away to those that are waiting to see it!!!  All I will say is...........within the first 15 minutes I was beyond happy!!!  And not even 30 minutes later crying mad!!!  You still have those to love and of course someone to hate!!!!  Watch it soon!!!

If you remember from Saturday's post I told you we were going to have a tea party prior to the show.  We did indeed have a tea party!  It ended up being earlier than I had expected, but the boys were getting hungry and it gave us time to get a few things done before it began.
It started at 8:00pm and was not over until 10:00pm.  We allowed the boys to stay up and watch it because they love the show.  They know all the characters and know the story. 

So I promised I would share pictures from the tea party.  It was so much fun for me planning it, preparing for it and then actually sitting down to enjoy a cup of tea.  Having tea with my three guys was so delightful.  I am thinking this is something we just might do more often.
I have raised the boys always doing a special "party" of some sort.  Celebrating this occasion and that. They know all too well that I enjoy setting a table and making a big to do out of something that is usually quite plain.  That is just how I am wired.

And this is the tea party.....

 We ended up having tea biscuits, chocolate bars, finger sandwiches with cream cheese and you can't have a tea party without pretzels. 

The tea biscuits were nothing more than a scone recipe minus any dried fruit and I added more sugar.  Plus sugar on top.  We loved them!!!

Ryan likes hot tea as well as me and Brant.  Matthew does not.  So I added an ice cube to his. I prefer my tea with real cream and sugar.  While preparing for the tea I did a "little" research on making and serving tea. In my research I found a piece on Downton Abbey where Cora is having tea at the Dowager Countess' home......old lady Grantham. 

***A tea ceremony provided an intimate setting between the hostess and her guests, for it was the hostess who prepared and served the tea, catering to each guest and handing them their custom-prepared tea one cup at a time. In this time honored ritual, one of the most important questions the dowager would ask was: “Would you care for weak tea or strong tea?” Cora’s preference would guide the Countess in the next stage of tea preparation, for if she said “strong tea,” then the Dowager would pour the tea as she had prepared it into Cora’s cup. Had Cora said “weak tea”, the Countess would pour a smaller quantitiy of the brew into the china cup, then top it off with hot water.
The Dowager would then ask her guest how much milk and sugar to add. She would have poured boiling water over the tea leaves in a tea pot, and steeped the leaves for three minutes, all the while conversing with her guests. At this point the water was no longer boiling. Then the Countess would pour in the milk. (If she poured it in first, she would have found it difficult to judge the strength of the tea by its color.) Hudson, the butler in Upstairs, Downstairs, said about pouring milk into tea: “Those of us downstairs put the milk in first, while those upstairs put the milk in last.”***

I was upstairs at our tea party.


In the picture below they were SO ready for the party to begin.  Matthew could not wait to get his pudgy little fingers on the chocolate bars!!

This is Ryan trying to get every last drop.....of SUGAR! There was actually a picture of him licking the inside of the cup, but it came out blurry.  He was not about to let that sugar get away!

And Matthew...well he knows what he is doing.  He usually was holding the saucer in one hand and drinking with the other.  Brant was also at the tea party, but no good pictures of Daddy.  Maybe at our next tea party.

It was a lovely tea party.  I am anxious to start looking for tea cups and saucers.  And a tea set.  I love the look of the matching tea set with all kinds of different cup and saucer sets.....like what we used.

Maybe next Sunday another tea party before Downton Abbey again!