girly tea tasting

My first event of 2009 was coordinating one of the "Ladies Night Out" evenings at my church. Ladies Night Out is a ministry that provides activities once a month for the ladies of our fellowship to get away and have some girlfriend time.

For this event I invited a local tea business to come and do a tea tasting for us. About 20 ladies came out for this very laid-back evening tea.

The decorating (always my favorite part!) was simple. I wanted to give the ladies a departure from the drab cold that is late January so the color scheme was light and girly, heavy on the pink and yellow. I used pink tulle to add some fantasy to the food area and pink rose petals and votives to pull everything together. Every element I used came from the church's storage closet (except for some new paper napkins and plastic forks). It felt really good to be reusing things and gave me more budget to spend on food!

Because this was an after 7pm event I created a menu that was heavy on the desserts and one that was mostly store-bought goodies to save my sanity (I prepared everything!). I did make the pineapple & cream cheese sandwiches, some yummy chocolate-chip meringues and chopped up a fruit salad. The rest of the menu consisted of bunches of red and green grapes, chocolate torte cake, caramel cups, raspberry Pims, éclairs, mixed nuts & mints.

Our Tea Lady provided four yummy teas for us to try, including my favorites Sticky Toffee Pudding & Chocolate Vanilla Mint. She also made up little tea samples as favors for us - cute!

Based on the feedback I've recived it was a sucessful event - yay!