Our Valentine's tea

Our Valentine's tea table. The centrepiece was my white teapot filled with pink carnations. Lily kindly informed me that you put tea in teapots, not flowers.

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Thanks to the whole family succumbing to a nasty stomach bug last week, most of my planned Valentine's activities didn't happen. However, we recovered in time to have our tea party on Sunday afternoon. Lily and I made the Valentine's cake after lunch and while it was baking, she and Tom made Valentine's Day cards from the little craft packs I had put together for them the night before.

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Emma likes to be wherever I am. She helped out with the baking by eating my measuring spoons.

I made our Valentine's cake using my fabulous new cake tin...I love it! The cake is a vanilla sponge and I filled the middle with clotted cream. I love clotted cream! You can take the girl out of Devon, but you can't take Devon out of the girl!

As a result of our being ill, the tea party wasn't as fancy as I'd originally planned. I had hoped to decorate the dining room along a Valentine theme and I also left a couple of things off the menu as none of us were back to our full appetites by Sunday. I think it turned out really nicely anyway though. The menu consisted of heart shaped sandwiches, strawberries, homemade fairy cakes, slices of heart shaped ham, a bowl of my favourite crisps and the Valentine's cake. To drink, we had cherryade served with heart-shaped ice cubes. I had really wanted to serve pink lemonade, but I couldn't get hold of any in time.

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I iced everyone's name on to homemade biscuits and used them as place settings.
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It's hard to see from the photo, but the fairy cakes are decorated with tiny pink hearts.

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After we put the Podlings to bed, Mark and I just ordered in pizza and had a quiet evening in front of the television. We have both been very tired since being ill, so we decided to postpone the romantic four course meal I had planned to cook until we can enjoy it properly. I suppose that means I get two Valentine's Days this year!
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The Podlings enjoyed our little tea. We all dressed in red in honour of the day. Tom particularly liked doing this as red is his favourite colour and was quite put out that we weren't all dressed in red again today. ...

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