Jane Austen & Regency Tea Party

This week started and ended with Jane Austen. I could say that I planned it but I didn't... (all pictures taken by the lovely Hadley who never put herself in a photo... silly girl.)

On Monday I hosted our third annual Regency Tea Party. So much fun. I feel hesitant about blogging about it as I don't want people to feel left out. I think pretty much every gal I know is a Jane Austen fan! The last couple of years we've done it outside so it was easier to invite more people. Plus, this was a good year to just keep it simple because of my silly memory. I kept forgetting about the whole thing. I even forgot to invite specific people.. please don't get mad! In fact I think I forgot about it each day the whole week before. Oops.

This year, at the encouragement of my friend, Kaitlyn, I did a more specific theme of Jane Austen. I asked people (if they wanted!) to share one of their favorite passages from her books. We then took turns reading them out loud which felt quite Jane Austen-ish.I chose the passage from Pride & Prejudice when Lizzy learns that she will be a stranger from one of her parents.

Here I am enjoying the party. I have no clue when Hadley took this picture, but I love it! Plus, those are my favorite-est earrings!

 Also, now I'm kicking myself for not taking more pictures, but I was actually enjoying the moment and not thinking of how I was going to be blogging this later.

After the readings we played a game. I wrote out various characters from the books onto cards and then taped them to everyone's back. The goal was to find out who you were by asking yes/no questions from other guests. You could only ask one question from each person at a time, ie, not standing there and grilling the other person! I turned out to be Mrs. Bennet which was funny as I had forgotten I had written her down!

Some of the younger ladies (and a very young lady) in their Regency Finery.

 After the game, we sat down to eat. What I've learned from hosting tea parties is that one of the funnest ways to do tea parties is for everyone to bring a dish for each lady coming. That way, there is usually a nice variety and the hostess (ie, lazy me!) doesn't have to do lots of cooking. And I think almost everyone enjoys having an excuse to make their favorite tea party recipe!

Also, I ask each lady coming to bring their own tea cup. That way I don't have to worry about not having enough tea cups and who doesn't love a chance to show off their favorite tea cup. :) After this tea party, I realized it really makes clean up much easier if you don't have to wash a whole bunch of tea cups!

Before the tea I also placed cards on the table with two conversation starters along the lines of: "What Jane Austen character are you most like?" and "What is your favorite Jane Austen movie/book?" It was delightful to hear everyone's thoughts. The girls then headed off to take some photos and we squeezed in a group photo with almost everyone!

Dog, knitting and wood fire. Not pictured: Pride & Prejudice on the screen.

Skip forward to today. I've now been sick with some weird nausea virus for four days. It's the weirdest one I've ever had. I'm kind of afraid to google it as I don't want to have anything really nasty. Anyways, today everyone went off to a wedding while Mom and I stayed home. And I was in the mood for Pride & Prejudice. So I sat and watched and knitted. Which sounds pretty ideal if it had only included something besides jello and chicken noodle soup to eat!