A Flower for Tea

Last year for my birthday, Jason took me out to tea. We went to a little tea shop in Salem next to Rita's Water Ice, and he diligently sat with me and ate scones and tea sandwiches because that is my ideal meal and one of my most favorite things to do. He drew the line at cucumber sandwiches, so I ate all of those. It was a lovely time. He also gave me a "coupon" to be taken out to tea sometime again within the next year.

Well, my birthday is coming up again soon, and I wanted to make sure to use my coupon before it expired. So a few weekends ago, we planned a date at The Wenham Tea House, which is the oldest continually operating tea house in the country.

I was very excited to go to afternoon tea. I wanted to get all cute and dressed up and springy because that just seems appropriate for tea. I know that people have afternoon tea all year round, but it just seems like a springish thing to do. Maybe it's the flowers on the teacups. I don't know. But regardless, I envisioned a springtime afternoon tea experience.

Unfortunately, I live in New England, and we don't really get spring here. We get endless winter followed by a few weeks of freezing rain and mud and then the trees start blooming around the end of May and two days later, it's summer. So as you can imagine, on the mid-March day Jason and I set out for afternoon tea, it was just above freezing and raining in torrents. There go my cute springtime attire plans.

But I would not be defeated. I found my warmest skirt/sweater combo and went to work on a coordinating headband that would add some flowery goodness to the ensemble. And here it is:
Unfortunately, I took these pictures on another rainy day so the color isn't fantastic. The flower is actually a bright purple, so it springed up my outfit quite nicely for a lovely pseudo-spring afternoon tea.