Kitchen Tea Party

Its getting close now... only a matter of weeks now to the wedding and it was time to gather friends around for my bridal shower - a traditional kitchen tea with a Marie Antoinette inspired theme of "Let them eat cake".

There were good games to play, a lolly jar guessing game, a masterchef inspired "Name that Spice" game and a board game that I designed and handpainted for the occasion.

The cake was decorated by myself including the sugar roses, the results of my cake decorating classes I've been doing recently. 

The table all looked very pretty with mum's fine china cups and tiered cake stands full of little delicate and yummy things to eat. 

As a final note the Kitchen Tea Party was the perfect opportunity to serve up some decorated cookies made for the September Daring Bakers Challenge. The cookies were cut in a variety of leaf shapes and decorated using my new piping nozzles courtesy of cake decorating classes. 

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The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

A Shannon Garson Nest

Now to the fun stuff... nesting...

I've always loved the imagery of a nest, those beautiful intricate lines woven across each other. The nest is spectacular visually, it draws you in and you can just admire it for long stretches of time, always picking up new details within it. 

The notion of nesting in terms of the domestic space is also appealing. I've flown the big nest in which I grew up as a chick and now I start the process of gathering together the twigs and branches to form my own nest. On the phone to my mum I will joke about going shopping for 'twigs' or items for my new household. I have completely ignored a whole years worth of clothes hanging on racks in favour for a nice cushion (cushions are a warming factor so this technically counts as a feather) or a lovely ceramic vase or bowl such as the above piece. 

The piece is by Australian ceramicist Shannon Garson. I bought this at Planet not long after I moved in so its a nice little motif for my own nest. Contemporary beautifully designed objects is one of my passions and I am slowly collecting up some nice examples. I will post up some more examples of what I have collected so far in due course. 

I chose to call my blog A well feathered nest due to this dual inspiration I find within nests, the creativity of their form and their sheltering aspect of warmth and protectiveness. My blog is to be about creativity and domesticity