Tea, Coffee and Dessert.......

Last week for Tablescape Thursday, I posted a tablescape I put together for a Birthday Lunch, using a pink and green color palette. To see this post, click HERE.

The birthday tablescape was in honor of my mother's birthday (which is today) and my youngest sister, whose birthday was last week. Since we weren't able to get together then (and not for dinner either) I kept some of the elements from that tablescape to use tonight for a little tea party at my house. Well, a tea and coffee and dessert party, actually!

I put two of my green plates on this 3-tiered server and then set out place mats, silver flatware, cups and saucers and small dessert plates.

I used my small dessert plates that I bought at an antique mall 2 for $1.00 (so I got twelve of them for $6.00!). I have since learned that these were made by a company called Royal York and were made in Japan. The pattern name is simply called RY01. I haven't been able to find out much else, such as when they were made. I also used the pink paper napkins I stamped with 'Happy Birthday'.

I was going to make some cupcakes, but when I visited a local bake shop called Sweet Perfections near my house to get some fancy cookies (the same bake shop that did our wedding cake), I saw all their pretty filled cupcakes and decided I had to get them instead of making some myself!  They were delicious. I love the frosting this bakery makes; it's light and creamy, not too sweet, but sweet enough to satisfy. I got Raspberry Rose (the one with the pink flower on top) which is a butter cake filled with raspberry preserves and a raspberry mousse, Chocolate Eclair (self-explanatory!) and the one in the back is a Red Velvet (red velvet cake filled with cream cheese, with a cream cheese frosting).

This picture was taken in my drawing room, but I used my vintage silver coffee/tea service to serve beverages on the sideboard. I heated water in my whistling tea kettle on the stove and then poured the hot water into the teapot and made coffee in my automatic coffee maker but then transfered the hot coffee to the coffee pot. It worked out very nice; it's really the first time I used both the teapot and coffee pot at the same time. I like my tea with milk and sugar, so half-and-half cream went into the creamer and sugar cubes into the sugar bowl. I just love sugar cubes....I think they are so cute. When I was a very young girl, I used to sneak a sugar cube from the sugar bowl that was always sitting on the dining room table at my grandparent's farm house whenever I would visit there.
  (Note: I've done some looking around to find out more about my vintage tea/coffee service and it's made by Community Silver( (Oneida) and it's called Ascot, which is a reproduction of a Sheffield design. I was unable to find an exact date about when these were made/sold, but one site said this pattern was introduced in 1940. I was also surprised to find a few auction sites and antique stores selling complete sets for $200 to $300. Another place was selling the pieces separately and the coffee pot alone was going for $175.00. We bought ours at a shop that sells items from estate sales. It was priced at about $60 if I recall and was sitting on a bottom shelf, completely black with tarnish. Looking at pictures of this set on an auction site, I noticed that the sugar bowl is supposed to have a lid; my sugar bowl is missing it's lid.)
Thanks for stopping by!