Welcome to Gaia! ::

I like black tea. Darjeeling is my favourite.

Dainty china tea cups. And fancy cookies. Cucumber sandwiches are kind of strange, if you ask me.

I personally love sweet English tea with lots of milk - and mint tea is really nice to serve.

Those really big, flowery teacups are gorgeous ^^ They make whoever's using them look all dainty.

I love Bigelow's Sweet Dreams tea. With lots of sugar. As for cups... o.O;;

my friend has a tea party this weekend... shes trying to steal my shoes so that she can wear them with her new dress...

i think red tea like orange pekoe with milk and sugar is good, very traditional, and compliment them with some butter cookies (minature sized ones).

i generally make some sort of fruit tea because everyone will drink it, as for snacks i always make some philo dough twists and i make tons of various cookies with diffrent tea leaves ground up and put in. mm now i want to have a teaparty.... heart

I love tea parties, and usually host at least one per week, if not more! ^_^


The type of tea I serve, as well as which one of my tea sets I use all depends on the situation.

For a casual gathering of a few close friends I'll usually use my eastern-styled tea set. It's very plain and good for asual occassions. The teas of choice for such occassions are usually green teas, herbal teas, oolong, or fruit teas. As for snacks, it's usually an 'anything goes' thing.

For larger or more formal tea parties I alomst always use my 'collectors tea set', which I'll explain in a bit. For formal tea parties, black tea is usually served, though some herbal teas (especially flowery teas) work well too. My personal favorite types of teas to serve at these occassions are chocolate tea, victorian rose tea, and this one blend I have thats made up of all sorts of flowers from Siberia.

For snacks I'll ususally make my own sweets. Cookies, cake, ice cream, biscotti, muffins, scones, fruits, crackers with jam, chocolates, as well as other types of sweets are all commonly served with tea.
Sometimes I'll have a tea luncheon where I'll serve salad and tiny sandwhiches with tea before bringing out some dessert foods.
Also, I used to serve cheeses with tea (I don't buy cheese anymore though, because dairy makes me sick...). I used to buy this really yummy fig and nut cheese as well as port wine cheese to serve. Everyone really seemed to like that. heart

As for my 'collector's tea set'. Collector's tea sets used to be quite common in many European countries. My neighbor, who grew up in Germany during WWII, taught me about them. A collectors tea set is a set where all the dessert dishes as well as cup and saucer sets are different. Not only does having those differences make the set very diverse and unique, but it makes it much easier to replace broken peices. Plus, it's really fun to actually collect peices for the set! My tea service is really nice. It's sivler-plated, and has a teapot, sugar bowl, tongs, and creamer, as well as three serving trays. I managed to find the set at a thrift shop for about $16. I also bought all of my dishes, cups and saucers at thrift shops for not too much money.