My aunt Joyce was interested in many things, including teas, antiques, and the décor in Cottage Living magazines. When she passed away last September, my sister and I, of course, couldn’t say ‘no’ to her collection of tea accessories: table cloths (vintage prints and some embroidered by her or grandma), tea sets, set-less cups and saucers, silver tiers, spoons, cake stands, and chicken bone dishes… I took home one of the fuller sets: Royal Albert Bone China: Old Country Roses.

We visited her (or she came to us) all the time. It started when we were kids – drinking tea together. I don’t think our parents or aunt Joyce was ever concerned about the caffeine content on tea bags and our ages! We’d mostly get Lipton and with a sprinkle of sugar and splash of milk- it takes me back to grandma’s house! So as kids, we’d never take the full tea set out. We never thought anything of it. Not that she didn’t trust us to not break it, but I think the work of taking the dishes down and hand-washing everything before use and after… I can understand that.

When we had a garage sale for some of grandma’s things, we had some tea items out. A lady who came by was a collector and shared that she owned Just Delicious Scones in a nearby city. One day Aunt Joyce brought us with her to check it out. This tea room was right up our alley! We made morning trips here together – they had a good deal for a long time, a couple scones and a tea pot that filled us up! We sat in eclectic ‘Victorian’ chairs and tables.

My family loved (and still do!) afternoon tea wherever we can get it. Our first time having Afternoon Tea at the Grand Hotel must have been 2016 when the girls on my mom’s side of the family went to Mackinac Island for the Lilac Festival. We knew Aunt Joyce had experienced this long before we did as a group because she had a trip with late Aunt Ginnie decades before, staying at the Grand Hotel and later taking up the harp instrument.

One year, my sister and I hosted a tea party for our friends. This was a lot of fun! We collected tea cups from various garage sales and thrift shops to use for each person and everyone took theirs home as their party favor. Whether they kept their tea cup or not – I don’t know! – but we found some really nice ones!

In 2019, for my sister’s wedding shower, my mother and I hosted a tea-party themed lunch. It was bring-your-own-tea cup (BYOT). We put to use a lot of Aunt Joyce’s linens though we bought paper doilies and cute plates. This time the favors were mini African Violet plants. (My plant is still alive and thriving!) And served scones from the tea room.

All this to say, tea parties are quite special to my sister and I.

As we were driving home with boxes of paper towel wrapped tea cups and vases, we decided we needed to have more tea parties. We needed to use the China and accessories, not keep the pieces on display-only.

Carolyn hosted the first one in January. Mom, her mother-in-law, our tea loving aunt from the other side of the fam came, a small group of us around her dining room table. Everything was delicious. I made “Two Kinds of Roasted Tomato with Burrata and Prosciutto” by Dan Pelosi and “Perfect Little Chocolate Puddings” by Lidey Heuck. That weekend, I had not done any running. We were barely getting started on ‘long runs’ for the year.

I hosted the next tea party, this past Saturday. Of course, I cleaned the house all Friday afternoon (hey, I took a half day of work to clean and rest up!). I made “Roasted Fig and Goat Cheese Parfaits“.

We wanted to get our long run in with our friend training for his first marathon. Since I was hosting, we picked a park closer to us and planned to meet at 7 AM. We aren’t running for speed and I didn’t want to be short on time, especially as host. That meant waking up by 6:15 AM and out the door by 6:40 AM. As we drove to the park, I admitted it was darker than anticipated. (I start work at 6:30 AM so most of the year it is always dark when I enter the building and I do not pay attention to sunrise times).

It was good timing because as we started running down the path at 7:10 AM, the sky was becoming lighter. The morning was about 33F, but not as bad as January’s 30-ish degree temps. That feels more bitter, doesn’t it? He had 11 miles on the schedule and while I normally wouldn’t encourage someone to jump too far ahead in their training program, we cannot run with him next weekend and I wanted to ensure he got through a long run as planned. We ran 12 miles! Again, not about speed but we all finished without walk breaks. I had a Honey Stinger Waffle for breakfast and Honey Stinger chews around the 6-mile and 10-mile mark. I gave my favorite Iron Strength DVD to him and collected my Girl Scout Cookies.

I was back home by 10 AM to shower and start boiling water for the tea party. This time, we had a little more family attend, including one of Aunt Joyce’s friends who became our family friend over the years. 🙂 We played Enya CDs Aunt Joyce kept.

Let’s not forget about how delicious tea parties are! We ate tea sandwiches with clotted cream and raspberry and blueberry jam, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, strawberry fluff, the parfaits, turkey-apple-cheese sandwiches, red pepper jelly and veggie sandwiches, stuffed olives, and cake. Of course you have to sample one of everything! Tea parties might have a lot of China but they also have a lot of calories!

After cleanup was completed in the afternoon, it was officially hard to move these legs. Ibuprofen was needed! The rest of my Saturday went like this: I had a great 2.5 hour nap, woke up to eat more leftover tea sandwiches for dinner, started to read but quickly started falling asleep. Completed my Duolingo French lesson half-asleep. Several hours of couch napping and back to bed I went.

Long runs can be so tiring! I used to always need to pick up coffee on the way home! Plus, I needed to catch up on sleep from the work week. As I am writing this, I’m doing my usual theraband leg lift exercises in between loads of laundry.

I’m really glad I was managed to enjoy some of my favorite things in one day: run and tea party! The things we do for running and our friends. 😊

Our next tea party will be this summer. We hope to have a larger space and invite friends in addition to family.