Tablescape: The Deer Ate My Garden Tea Party

Yep! I left the gate open to my garden and the local deer feasted on about 25 roses, two blackberries, 12 day lillies, some pepper plants and a few other odds and ends!  I had ten of these little knockouts that I had planted a month or so ago and now they are sticks! Eeeeeek!

This Dortmond antique rose was doing good too.

I won't include the after pictures! Needless to say the deer discovery was a downer! Sooooo, the girls and I decided to have a tea party instead of playing in the garden today! Oh, and the cold front that blew in could also be a factor!

Welcome to our little tea party!

Forgive the color scheme (kind of fallish) but when you are "decorating" and pulling out china with a three year old and a 9 month old ... um.. let's just say that you grab the closest dishes. In this case, these dishes are what I usually use in the fall. They are by Vernon Kilns and made in California from 1944-1954. I love that this set has several neat pieces that western dishes don't usually have. One example is the tea set.

I love the westward the wagons scene on this coffee pot!

Also the little tea pot is cute and has boats on a river.

Here is the bread plate that is going to hold our cookies!

The Francis the First sterling salt cellars with matching salt spoons are perfect for little helpings of ice cream (Yes, you mothers know why we like small helpings of ice cream for our little ones!)

Here is a three tiered server.

Fun for our shortbread cookies. We used the new Sarabeth's Bakery Cookbook and the recipe for shortbread cookies was excellent. It was perfect for little kids. No eggs of course and it was very easy for my three year old to handle. We added a little apricot jam for fun.

Kiley also thoought a ice cream sandwich sounded good.

Here is all the roses that I had left in the garden. There was a little New Dawn rose hidden in the courtyard that the deer missed. So we added some Zinnias because Kiley wanted yellow.

Here is Kiley in my great grandmother's gardening hat.

Klacey guarding her cookie.

Curley Sue joined us as well!

And our final guest was pinkie the pony.

We hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy your roses and don't forget to shut the gate! Hee hee.

 P.S. The linens are Ralph Lauren from a couple of years back in ivory. The dinner plates are Patrician pattern by Wedgewood. They are my great-grandmother Louise's. They look lovely with the Vernon Kilns 1860 pattern. The sterling is Francis the First by Reed and Barton. The tumblers for the lemonade are ruby cut glass. Have a great day!

We are linking to Between Naps on the Porch Tablescape party.
Check out how the experts tablescape!

and Vintage Inspiration Friday at Common Ground