Teatime and Lavender

Lavender seems to be a very fashionable flower these days. My Mum grew lavender, and harvested the flowers and sewed fragrant lavender sachets that were scattered in dresser drawers and given away to friends at Christmas. My grandma did too. Today lavender has a new use. It's used in cake flavourings, and you can wash it all down with lavender tea.

Vive Lavender is a lavender farm just a little north of where I live, and last week I went with a group of five other ladies (yes, I'm a lady) to have tea at the farm. A wander round the lavender beds.... getting near the end of the season now.  And a lovely garden of perennials, sorry I didn't take a pic.

It was another hot day so we sat in the shade of the big tent, white tablecloths and linen napkins. A choice of around 15 different teas, all served in china teapots, and fancy bone china cups and saucers. An array of sandwiches and wraps, fruit, vegetables, scones with jam and cream, and on the top layer, fancy cakes. Are you envious?

Splash!

I was at a pool party in a friend's lovely back yard. Here's the view during the day.......

 .... and after dark.

A pool in the back yard would be wonderful, I'd be swimming in it every day, but it's a lot of work, especially with so many trees dropping leaves, and the Canadian summer is so short, only 4 months of swimming weather and then it's time to winterize the pool until the next hint of summer sunshine.

If You Go Out In The Woods Today....

... You're sure of a big surprise....

Back in June, I hosted a party for The Bride to welcome the twins. Of course, the babies still had a while to go before making their grand entrance into the world, but they were very much in evidence if you looked at The Bride in profile! I invited friends, family, neighbours, and we enjoyed an afternoon filled with laughter, friendship, gifts and of course, party food.

Just look at this amazing cake!

Remember that children's song, The Teddy Bear's Picnic?

All created by hand by a wonderful friend. The picnic quilt was made of fondant icing. The grass and flowers were butter icing. The leaves even had sparkle on them. The baby bears were created from rice krispie squares moulded into a bear shape and covered in chocolate. There were baby boots and baby toys for the bears to play with. All completely edible.

The little boy bear cub brought his baby bottle.

And the little girl bear cub was in charge of the teapot and the cookies.
"Shall I be Mother?"

Who was the domestic goddess that created this work of edible art?

My good friend Glitterfly, that's who. She has just started her own blog, so please, go and pay her a visit. And don't forget to tell her how gorgeous the cake was!

On The Table #4

It was a Girls Night Out.... My friend G and her two sisters S and N who were visiting for the weekend, my friend C who had left her husband looking after her three little ones for a rare evening out, and me.... so we ordered wings and fries and G provided the salad and the wine.

We pigged out on all the things we should never eat. And we loved it!
Wing flavours were honey garlic, thai, BBQ garlic, gar-par, accompanied by gar-par fries and sweet potato fries.... truly an overdose of garlic fumes filled the house by the end of the evening. I pitied C's husband the next morning.

And then we rounded the evening out with a cutthroat friendly game of Aggravation.
Believe me, those women are brutal when they really want to win!