A Christmas Tea

Last year I was looking in my cupboard of good china that my husband’s mother and grandmother had passed down to me. I noticed the beautiful tea cups that his Grandma Hicks had collected in the 1940s and 50s on her visits to Vancouver BC. I just never seemed to use those tea cups. So I had a thought – why not have a Christmas Tea Party with my 7 year old granddaughter, Molly. I asked her if she would like to have a couple of friends over for Tea and she was very enthusiastic about it.

Each year, for the last couple of years, Molly has helped me decorate for Christmas. She has a lot of fun putting out our decorations. This year her brother, Patrick, will join her on our decoration day. We will do this the Tuesday after Thanksgiving for our art class.

Last year we were decorated after Thanksgiving, also, so our Tea Party was scheduled for the second weekend in December. I told Molly she could invite three friends to arrive at 2:00 in the afternoon. Their parents would pick them up at 3:30. We made some invitations that she gave to her guests. It is such a busy time of year, two of her choices couldn’t come so she invited a cousin, who brought a friend along.

Molly and I planned the party. We would play some games, eat petit four cakes, little sandwiches and tea. If someone didn’t like the tea we would have some hot chocolate on hand. I found the petit fours (little bite sized cakes) at the Red Rooster Bakery in downtown Longview. I just checked with them and they plan on offering petit four cakes again this Christmas season. They were really delicious.

Once the girls arrived, we played some games. The first game was Button Bingo. I searched online for Christmas Bingo and easily found a site with Bingo cards all made up that I could just print. And there was a list of the pictures for the caller. We used my mother’s old buttons, that Molly always likes to look through, for our Bingo marks. The girls had fun with this game.

Other games we played were – musical chairs to Christmas music, a memory game where I put Christmas items on a tray that they looked at and then had to recall what they saw, and we had a Christmas candy hunt – similar to an Easter candy hunt. They kept re-hiding their candy and searching again.

Molly and I had set the table with my husband’s grandmother’s china. I made egg salad, ham and cheese, and cheese sandwiches. Of course I cut the crusts off just to be fancy, and I cut each sandwich in to four triangular pieces. We had mints in a fancy dish. The petit four cakes came in white and chocolate and had little Christmas decorations on them. I put them on a beautiful old glass pedestal cake dish that belonged to be my Grandma Kleppe. And we had peppermint ice cream to have with our little cakes.

The girls came dressed in their Christmas dresses and were very well behaved. We have a big doll house, that was given to us by Molly’s great aunt, for the kids to play with. That took care of the time they were waiting for everyone to arrive.

I just called Molly to ask her if she would like to have a Christmas Tea again this year and again she is very excited about it. I asked what she might like to do differently. She said maybe a few more games, chocolate dipped strawberries and gingerbread cookies. We have set a tentative date for December 12.

Christmas toys are sometimes outgrown and forgotten but Christmas memories last for a lifetime.

Merry Christmas to all of you – from Molly and Grandma Blue

I’m sure I don’t know all of the fun things to do or places to take kids in our area – if you have a suggestion and we use it in an article you will receive a prize. Logon to our website and fill in the suggestion box. Past articles are listed there as well: www.gottabefun.com/bugler.html or comment and share online:
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Photo is Molly Mahoney and Melanie Chamblee at the 2008 Christmas Tea, picture by Jeanette Mahoney