Memories of Tea Parties

Did you have tea parties when you were a kid? Or did you set the scene for them for your children? I loved tea parties and can remember little sets of dishes and tiny silverware, too. Somewhere in my photos, I have this really cute photo of my kids playing "tea party" and they are using the set of Little Lulu dishes that my mother made in her ceramic shop. When I come across it, I am going to post it her on Tea and Stitches. :-)

There were two kinds of tea parties that we played at when I was a kid..........there were "mud pie" tea parties and then there were tea parties where we actually had some tea and cookies. Thinking about that reminded me of a treat that I loved when I was young...........SUGAR sandwiches. Yes, that's right........soft white bread (Wonder Bread in the 50's), real butter and pure white sugar. Looks just like the half-sandwich you see in my photo. Only difference is that I went "light" on the sugar but I used real butter. And with that cup of English Breakfast tea, it was delicious. In fact, I had forgotten how good a SUGAR sandwich can taste!!! The other snack I liked was frosted soda crackers. When there were not "real" cookies in the cupboards, my mom would make up some vanilla icing and spread it on crackers. The combination of the sweet and salty is really tasty. When I grew and married and there were not cookies in the house, I, to0, made frosted crackers for a treat. I think they are even better than frosted graham crackers!

This was just a simple tea today. After all of yesterday's treats, I didn't need much of a snack. If you haven't tried a sugar sandwich or frosted crackers, take a chance and see if it might be just the thing for a snack tonight!

It is, oh, so nice.....to share!

That's all there is to it!! It is just nice to share. Life is so much more pleasant that way!! After celebrating my birthday yesterday, I can't help but think ...... good grief, has it been that many years since I was a little girl?!! Sure has!! And you know what.......I enjoyed being a kid so much that I am not sure I ever grew up!! LOL!!
Pleasant memories of how much fun it was to play in the rain and then follow that with making mud pies and it didn't get any better. Because we lived in a river town, there was one particular spot on our sidewalk where the soft silt collected and I remember how fun it was to feel the mud between your toes. And I remember little pans filled with mud pies that dried in the sun. I'm sure my mother did the same thing as a child and I know my kids did. With those thoughts in mind, I sketched this design a few years ago. It is, of course, reminiscent of Sunbonnet designs but I drew the sketch thinking of my daughter and her kindergarten friend. It's an 8 1/2" by 11" design and I have shown it in three needlework examples..........
First there is Redwork and I loved it when I finished it in Redwork on muslin.

And then I thought I'd try traditional embroidery on muslin like my mother did as a child.

And then I combined embroidery and colored pencils on muslin and I really like this one. To get the pattern, you can copy the Redwork design to your computer and then print it out. I will be posting the PDF file for this to my Seasons Yahoo Group later on this week.

And now it's time to fix a cup of tea. Back soon.....

Sandi