Our Annual Tea

Our church's annual Christmas tea is coming up in a couple of weeks. Last year I had taken my inspiration from a spread in a magazine and it turned out pretty nice, I think (see the post here).


This year I don't have any tangible inspiration just an idea in my head. I'm thinking teas around the world with a sort of vintage travel motif. So I've started gathering items to decorate the table with but I feel like I'm missing something.


So far, I have this little globe...

It's going to sit on top of three cigar boxes that I'm going to paint to look like vintage suitcases. That will be the centerpiece with a wreath around them with misc travel ornaments we've collected over the years.

We've bought tea from a bunch of different countries (ie rooibos from South Africa, green tea from China, Spiced Chai from India, etc) and the placemats will be flags that correspond to each country.

And that's all I got. I feel like we need something else, maybe a travel themed table cloth and/ or napkins, I dunno. If anybody has any suggestions please let me know.

Our Dining Room

Last Tuesday marked a year since we've been in our house. During that year our dining room has had many roles...sewing room, storage room, buffet room...but it was never really a dining room until now. I was lucky enough to grab a really great table off free cycle that sits about 8 comfortably and I scour the thrift shops on a regular basis for dining chairs (wicker back preferably) and do a bunch of bargain shopping for the table accessories. So far here's what we have...

I put up the two pics because only one has the chair in it. I know there are people out there that think it's crazy to paint over perfectly good wood but I can't help myself, I love white furniture so I pretty much paint everything white. So the white chair at the end of the table was unpainted when I bought it (and it's partner) at Goodwill, but like I said, I can't help myself.

At the moment this is what is at each place setting. Our cat hasn't learned that the table is off limits yet so there's no table cloth (much too tempting!) and no plates or any type of breakables. Just these place mats and napkins.

I found this candle holder at a local thrift shop and loved it instantly. Mostly because if you look at it closely you can see that it is handmade. Unfortunately, the weld joints don't really show up in my photos, but take my word for it, they're there.

Finally I put this up...

Remember from my last post? This is what that turned into.

So, now, we have a proper dining room...Yay!

I survived!

So I survived the chaos that is the Harvest Festival at my church. We had somewhere near 3000 people attend. It seems more like 10,000 when all you do is hand out candy for 2 1/2 hours. It was a lot of fun tho. This year Halloween just kind of snuck up on me so the decorations for the car were, let's just say minimal. Here's my sister and the car...

I must say that this year's costume was more easily recognized than the last one...

I was dressed as Peach from Finding Nemo. Most people thought I was Patrick from Sponge Bob, at least he's also a starfish, but one guy thought I was a tongue...makes me wonder about the things floating around in that guy's head!

Anywho, the M&M's went over well and we had a lot of fun.

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To remind myself that this is indeed fall (even tho it feels like summer) I'm working on a few projects for the house. Just some small decorations to put up here and there. See if you can guess what this one is...