Tea Party Baby Shower

When my friend Kelley announced they were having TWINS, I was over-the-moon excited for her and her husband. Like many, their journey to being parents was not easy, and they are so grateful to have a double blessing coming this fall. I recently co-hosted a shower for her, and let me tell you, there are a lot of really cheesy ideas out there for a baby shower for twins. Doublemint gum themed? No, thank you. “Son of a gun, there’s more than one” western-themed shower? Umm, no. Just no.

I landed on a “Tea for Two” tea party theme. Afternoon tea is such a fun activity with the girls (I even requested it for my bridal shower!) so I knew this would be perfect.

Kelley is known for her Tablesetting Tuesday (#tablesettingtuesday) feature on Instagram, so I first set to work on the table. My mom always sets the table the day before a holiday or event, and I can’t recommend this enough. There’s nothing like trying to match silverware when there are guests on the way and food is in the oven! So I set the table the day before so I could concentrate on the food on the morning of the shower.

For the table, I used my Auntie Carol’s 1970s wedding china, my Grandma’s silver, a white tablecloth from Target, peony napkin rings from Crate & Barrel, and stone blue napkins from World Market. Tip: World Market has one of the best deals on good-quality cloth napkins ($10 for 6), and they come in a variety of colors. They wash really nicely and require just light ironing (or maybe even no ironing if you take them out of the dryer in a timely manner, which I do not).

Now onto the food! I wanted a number of food options, since variety is one of my favorite parts of afternoon tea. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make everything from scratch, so I used a few store-bought options to fill in.

A proper British afternoon tea would not be complete without scones. I used my white chocolate & orange scone recipe and tweaked it to create two flavors: chocolate chip and lemon blueberry. While a “proper” scone recipe does not include egg, this recipe creates a slightly more moist scone than the crumbly British ones.

It’s not a tea party baby shower without tea sandwiches! I used this recipe for cucumber sandwiches, but topped them with another slice of pumpernickel and cut them into triangles. I also made ham and pimento cheese tea sandwiches with Sara Lee very thinly sliced white bread (you can find it in the bread aisle in a white package), thinly sliced ham, and store-bought pimento cheese spread.

Tea party food tends to be on the sweeter side, so a few dozen Quiche Lorraine-influenced frittata bites balanced out the menu nicely. I used 7 eggs, ½ cup of Gruyere, 2 slices of cooked & chopped bacon, and a few slices of chopped deli ham to create the two-bite frittatas, which I baked in mini muffin tins.

The fruit salad was a mixture of halved green grapes, sliced strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. I tossed them with a simple syrup made with sugar, mint, lemon zest, and vanilla.

To add some veggies to the party, I piped Boursin cheese between two cucumber rounds, and then piped a little more on top. As soon as every found out that it was Boursin, they flew off the plate. What is it about that amazing cheese that makes it so irresistible?

The hit of the party were these Chicken Salad Puff Pastry Bites. It’s store-bought chicken salad (thank you, Trader Joe’s) in homemade puff pastry rounds. Get the how-to on that here!

Dessert was a mixture of homemade + store-bought. Trader Joe’s carries amazing French macarons in the freezer section. I also picked up a few boxes of Trader Joe’s flower-shaped chocolate mousse cakes. They were darling alongside homemade bite-sized Lemon Bars (the recipe is from Magnolia Table: A Collection of Recipes for Gathering).

The Tea Party Baby Shower was on a warm June day, so everyone passed on drinking hot tea. But that was undoubtedly because my friend Jackie made some amazing mocktails and cocktails! She made both Watermelon Mint Mocktails/Cocktails and Grapefruit Rosemary Mocktails/Cocktails. Both recipes have an option to use either sparkling wine or sparkling mineral water, so it was nice to have both an alcoholic and non-alcoholic option. Jackie brought a set of champagne glasses and we used my inexpensive set of toasting flutes so everyone could try both of the beverages.

It’s not a baby shower without games! My friend Stephanie selected a few activities including “guess the baby food”. It was so hard! Many of them had multiple flavors in one jar, and I was terrible at it. Also, “chicken and gravy” baby food is gross. With Kelley’s permission, we also played “how big is mommy’s belly?” with string and another game where we matched the mother animal to the baby animal.

It was such a lovely day of celebrating Kelley and her husband Luke’s prayed-for, yearned-for double blessing.

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