Flowers and Tea Parties

We made some flowers this week. It's been frigid cold, too cold to go outside for any length of time so the girls and I created our own fun inside. I've seen these flowers all over Pinterest and decided this would be the week to make them. I used several different tutorials to get ideas from and then created my flowers based on the fabric and embellishments I had here at home. I was so pleased with how they turned out! I left them all just as flowers with room for a bobby pin or hair clip or safety pin so I can use them in a variety of ways.

The brown flower with the wooden beads is the same white fabric as the other flowers, I just dyed it with tea! I soaked the circles of fabric with several tea bags for about 24 hours and got a very nice brown.

The blue plaid flower is cotton flannel. And the floral white pattern flower and the green flower are cotton as well. All the others are tulle and white sheer, leftovers from my wedding dress. I made 14 flowers all told, and they really did come together rather quickly.

The tutorials I used:

Fabric Rosettes

Using Sheer Fabric

And just for fun, some more inspiration!

Ribbon Headband

And some creative uses for all the flowers!

  It's been a week long project but I've had so much fun and so have the girls. Khaira's been on my lap while I sewed or sleeping. Kilmeny has emptied the entire contents of my fabric, counted the beads, drawn on everything including her dolly with the permanent marker, and has decided what flowers belong to whom. And we have drunk tea. Lots of tea. And maybe had a bit of chocolate too.

Are you staying warm and creative?

little girls, jack- in- the- boxes, and aunties

One of the best bits about living with family is that Kilmeny gets to spend lots of time with her uncles and aunts who in turn are patient with her and play all sorts of games with her. Like winding the little jack-in-the-box. And laughing. And then doing it all again.

a cream tea

 If you're going to have a tea party, then make it a cream tea with few extras. Chocolate covered strawberries are a nice extra especially if you're going to have cream tea in February near Valentine's Day with a few of your sisters-in-law. 

 Party mints are also nice. Besides they look so pretty in a glass goblet and they are a tradition at all Mosher girl get-togethers from before I was a Mosher Girl. My sisters and I have our own traditional mints that we always had our Valentine's tea parties. It only feels right to have a tea party around the 14th.

 Lindt chocolate hearts make lovely place-markers, I loved how the red heart splashed on the neutral china and tablecloth but I really loved the chocolaty goodness under the red foil!

 And then they were the scones. And the cream. And the jam. Oh, bliss! I scoured the internet for a recipe for devonshire cream, short of importing it from England, and we quite enjoyed it. My sister has the most amazing recipe for scones, so light and flaky. They were the perfect combination with the cream and jam. A proper Cream Tea must have strawberry jam but in the absence of strawberry, raspberry is allowed to be served. We had raspberry. 

And being Valentine's we consumed a great deal of cinnamon hearts. In fact, they caused quite a bit of laughter and we departed from regular British decorum at our tea party. But we concluded that we had more fun this way.

 It was a quiet afternoon filled with laughter and delicious scones and pots of tea and memories. Even the littlest girl got to be involved and was quite covered in a creamy jam mixture by the end. We will do it again because it's a special tradition started with my sisters and I will pass it down to my daughters. 

Valentine's isn't just a day for lovers, it's a day for love and celebrating those special to you. 

The recipe for devonshire cream can be found here. Serve with scones, strawberry jam and tea with milk.

Girl Stuff