We had a tea party and it was fabulous

Well, this is a very overdue post! This actually happened 22nd May, Danielle's birthday, if you follow Charlotte on instagram or either of us on twitter you would have seen a couple of preview snaps, however if not, we'll explain about our fabulous/stressful day here!

After weeks of planning and preparing it all paid off in the end! Charlotte had an exam in the morning until 11.30, so the food preparation didn't start till 12pm and it was meant to be starting at 3pm, so we were about 45 minutes late.
As soon as Charlotte was back at the flat, the baking and sandwich making began! Charlotte was in control of baking, Tori was in control of overall food preparation and sandwich making, when David (Charlotte's boyfriend) finally got to Leeds he was roped into sandwich making and Hayley was in charge of decorating the table! So we had a couple more pairs of hands to help us, otherwise we would have been hours late and Danielle would have been locked in her room, tearing her hair out (she wasn't allowed in the kitchen until it was done, hehe)

David's station

Tori's station

Hayley's station, the flower decoration (real and fake flowers)

The chocolate cake Charlotte made

The table looked amazing, there was everything from crisps, jelly, chocolate strawberries, teacup cupcakes, battenburg, scones, the very English triangle cut sandwiches and one of Danielle's friends even brought some champagne.
We filled a cupcake stand with scones and Charlotte's baking scales filled with minstrels and we had the birthday cake! Cherry and toffee bakewells, bottles of bubbles, sweet and our Twinings Afternoon Tea Bags were dotted all over the table.

Twinings Afternoon Tea*

Twinings Afternoon Tea Collection; the collection includes Orginal English Breakfast, The Earl Grey, and Peppermint, all English favourites. After offering out the range of tea bags, it was clear to say that Orginigal English Breakfast was the most popular, because who doesn't love a good old brew? Earl Grey was also popular, however personally we don't like it as it's quite an acquired taste, you either love it or hate the distinctive bergamot flavour! Peppermint on the other hand was sort of passed along the table, Charlotte liked it and had a couple of cups, it tastes like chewing gum which was really strange but refreshing and aids digestions, definitely worth trying.

Each of these flavours comes in a separate caddy which has 20 individually wrapped teabags. We love the beautifully designed caddys, they totally sell the product to us. We do think that for £5 a pop just for 20 tea bags and a caddy is a bit steep, however the packaging, wrapping and taste make it totally worth it. We've decided that after we've drank all of the tea we are going to buy either a pack of 50 or 100 of English Breakfast and probably Peppermint and then fill up our orginal caddys as that works out cheaper (around £2-£4) and you get more tea bags, and more tea is always better. We really like having the tea bags wrapped up individually as it makes it seem posher, neater, the tea bag string is kept separate to other teabags and it makes them easy to store in the caddy, however on the other hand it just seems like too much packaging and unnecessary waste for the environment, so we're a bit undecided on them being indivually wrapped.

The overall tea party was amazing, everyone felt so sick after so many sandwiches and tea, Danielle loved all of it and the chocolate cake was delicious! At the end we gave everyone party bags with a slice of cake and some sweets in. This was such a great way to end the year at uni, it's a shame not all the girls could make it!

This is something we definitely want to do again and maybe try some other flavours of Twinings tea. We think birthdays are a perfect opportunity instead of the traditional party buffet this is something you can do in the afternoon enabling you to socialise and have some food before maybe going out at night. For this particular tea party we went very traditional with the decor and food which we think worked extremely well. And of course it is always nice to dress up nice without the pain of heels...

With the recent release of F. Scott Fitzgeralds 'The Great Gatsby' set in the roaring 20's and one of my favourite books! (one im going to get Charl to read hopefully!)

We thought this would be the perfect opportunity to incorporate this into our student lives by having a themed tea party. We're talking men in suits and girls in flapper dresses, red lipstick, white dresses, fur and lots of embellishment!. Still sticking to the traditional afternoon tea menu but adding a twist to the decor and dress. This is defiantly on the cards for our birthdays! Any excuse for fancy dress and getting all dressed up and because we love the styles and trends of the 20's!


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Have you tried Twinings fabulous tea?

Will you be having your own tea party?

Have you watched The Great Gatsby yet?