Please Say You Will Come to the Party!

Dearest Friends,
I am so very happy to tell you that I will be participating once again in The Mad Tea Party, being hosted by Mademoiselle Vanessa of A Fanciful Twist! You all know how much I love a blog party! You can click here to see all the fun I had last year! I have already dragged out the trunk of ideas and images and am happily sorting through the things I will use for the party! What a mess I have made already, but I promise everything will be just perfect for you on June 26th! I just can't wait! But it won't be party if you are not there! So, please, won't you visit Vanessa's beautiful blog to find out how you can be there too?

A Dear Friend Brings a Special Guest . . .

Dearest Friends,
Have I told you lately how happy I am that you visit with me here in The Tearoom? I have met such lovely friends here!

This morning, my lovely friend in Paris Marie-France has brought us a special guest. It is my deepest honor today to be hosting a special tea in honor of Our Queen Marie Antoinette!

The collage above is one Marie-France created for me! It really is perfect, isn't it? Our Queen sits here in The Tearoom in such beautiful colors! She created this for a post she has very graciously written about me and The Tearoom on her gorgeous collage site NigéArt! Merci beaucoup, ma chère ami! C'est incroyable!

And just when I was beginning to wonder what to serve my friends and honored guests today, I checked my e-mail again and what did I find? This lovely dessert from Monsieur Pierre Hermé! I'm sure some of you will remember that spring is the time of year for the emergence of his fetish flavor Montebello. And so thank you, Monsieur Hermé for providing me with something wonderful to serve my guests today! For tea, I will be serving the Quatre Fruit Rouge tea (Four Red Fruits) scented with the essences of strawberry, raspberry, cherry and currant from Betjeman & Barton, brought to our attention by Vicky at the lovely French Essence.



(In the meanwhile, Miss LuLu is ill, so we will leave a cup of Earl Grey next to her bed! Note to Fur Babies:
This tea is for Mommy. Do not drink it please!)

Mademoiselle Moon in the Spotlight...

Dearest Friends,
I am so very pleased! I have just received an Etsy convo letting me know that Our Dear Mademoiselle Moon is having her 15 Minutes of Fame in a very fun Etsy Treasury tonight! There are so many beautiful and unusual items (you know how much I do love the combination of beautiful and unusual!) Along with my Mademoiselle Moon card, there are purple watermelons that look like the night sky, pink peppercorn lollipops and many other very sweet things! Thank you so much Tamera, for including me in this Treasury!

New Blog Candy

Dearest Friends,
Inspired by watching The Duchess, starring Keira Knightly, I have a new-found fascination with Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire. I have long included the wonderful blog Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century in my list of must-read blogs and I am now very happy to include its sister site Georgiana's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century as well! If you have not already, indulge and immerse yourself in this delightful blog devoted to this fascinating woman. No other excuse is needed to include this excellent blog in my list, but I was intrigued by these connections:

-She and Marie Antoinette were great friends and the Duchess remained her friend for the rest of her life.

-The Duchess had a very famous affair with Charles Grey, also known as the 2nd Earl Grey. It was after him that one of our favorite teas, Earl Grey, was named!

Soon, I will have more new blog candy coming up to entice you...

New Etsy Items

Dearest Friends,
Please won't you take a moment to take a look at the new items I have made for the Etsy shop (also called "The Gift Shop" because if I went to a place like The Gossamer Tearoom, I would want to take home souvenirs!)



Some while ago, I started to make tags that I thought would be used as gift tags. I gave some to friends and the first thing they did was use them as bookmarks instead! Clever them! So, they can be used as tags or bookmarks and just maybe you have even more ideas for them! Please let me know if you do! I called them the "Chapeaux des Gateaux" Bookmarks/Tags (that's Cake Hat in French!) because with my handy computer, I stacked desserts, teacups and fruits on top of these ladies heads (and they wear them very gracefully, I might add!). The two pictures above are close ups of these lovely, glittery tags!

I have also been hard at work on another item. It is a note card/gift tag set called "Midnight in Paris". All the images are rubberstamped on black cardstock and then embossed with metallic copper embossing powder, so they shine just like new pennies! There are three cards and four gift tags per set, plus the set comes packaged in a small portfolio with a metallic pen for writing on them (and then using on other correspondence when you have used all of these!). The cards include an eye and the word "Bonjour", a strawberry and the word "Merci" and Cupid asleep in a comfy chair with "Je t'aime" underneath! The gift tags are an art deco hotel sign, a vintage French postage stamp, a bottle of champagne and a teacup with the words "Tea Party" dangling from it. All of the tags are tied with pretty metallic copper twine. A close-up of the Merci card is shown below.


Thank you so much, dear friends, for taking a look at the things I have fun making!

Betty

Another Thank You . . .

Dear Friends,
Today, I would like to thank my very dear friend Marie-France from Paris, who has been so lovely as to have given me a blog award!!! Thank you so very, very much! Once again, I am humbled and honored! This dear friend has several wonderful blogs of freebie images and an Etsy shop! I first met her through her blog Marie's Freebies, about which I have blogged before. Then, she started Croquette a Du Bol, with many of beautiful images of cats. Now, she has started Il Etait Une Fois Toi Mon Chien, with many beautiful images of dogs (including the one above)! She is really such a nice lady and I am so lucky to have met her through the blogging world!

(Note: Sadly, she has now closed all of her blogs and I have disabled the links because others have now taken the links to lead to things that were NOT so nice as her blogs were!)




So, my duties are as follows: List 10 things that make me happy, 5 unusual things about myself and name 5 friends to pass to award to. I am still deciding who I will pass it to next, but the following are my answers for the questions:

Ten Things That Make Me Happy
-My dear husband Mr. V!
-Waking up and seeing the sun shining (not always a common occurrence here in New England)
-Greeting the moonbeams creeping in our window at night, courtesy of our friend Mlle. Moon
-Blogging or doing art work in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep
-Creating digital collages with vintage images
-Wearing my favorite pair of barefeet (which I do most of the time)
-Being completely absorbed by a really fun book
-Listening to music I haven't heard in a while and finding myself transported to a time in the past when I first heard it
-Experiencing food in every way (cooking, eating, reading about, dreaming about)
-Moxie, a soda that is generally only available in the northeast. I had just about given up drinking soda and then I moved back here and I'm hooked again!

Five Unusual Things You Might Not Know About Me
-I am phobic of butterflies! I love the way they look, but if they fly at me, I duck!
-I love thunderstorms!
-My least favorite part of most sandwiches is the bread and I have a habit of disposing of it halfway through the sandwich and only eating what's inside (unless I'm eating tea sandwiches)!
-My taste in music ranges from Sade to Tricky, from The Blue Nile to Bat for Lashes, from Everything But the Girl to Eddie Money, house to 16th Century harpsichord, Scritti Politti to Sting. It's not that I listen to everything, but I have a VERY wide range of musical tastes.
-Everyone knows my favorite color is purple (although I love working with a lot of black in art and design). But my second favorite color is chartreuse green and I use it in collages and photos probably more than you have noticed!

I have decided to build a new "wing" of the Tearoom for the blog awards I have received! If you click on the strawberry in the right hand column, it will lead you to a brand new Gossamer Tearoom page with links to the lovely people who have honored me with awards.

Wishing you all a splendid rest of your day!

Betty