Ladies' Old Fashioned Tea Party

Yes folks, we did throw an old-fashioned tea party!
For an extra special tea party, the Bossie Girls say:

• A small-ish group works well for this.  When everyone can fit around the table, we can all hear each other chat and laugh.  This is excellent Bonding Time With Your Bossies!
• Make sure to have some dress-up clothes on hand for this!  It gives it a sense of occasion and play, and not everyone has a tea-party-ish hat.  
• Next time, Bossie Ms. Pip here will make sure to have extra dress-up clothes on hand.  As it was, we had fun with the collection of vintage aprons, table cloths, and scarves that I had picked up on Craigslist.  (For a great price, of course!)
• Make it a potluck if you do not have time to prepare goodies.
• If you can manage to have some cookies baking when your guests arrive, they will be very happy about it.  I promise!  Trader Joe's cookies are Very Yummy... just in case no one has time to bake.  You can heat them up in the oven to make them warm and spread the yummy smell throughout the house.   Mmmmmmmmmm.......
• If your group is up for it, feel free to spike the tea.  Its medicinal.  Of course it is!  You may, of course, feel Plenty Festive Enough with straight tea.
• Google how to read tea leaves!  Then, tell everyone what you learned.  Everyone can read their own, taking turns 'round the table.
• Ask people to tell stories about tea parties from other times.
• A tea set With Attitude can add to the occasion:

                               

Bossie Girlfriend Points for Bossie Ms. Hattie

A gazillion Bossie Girlfriend points to Miss Hattie, who, after joining me in seeing my only daughter graduate from high school and go off to the senior all-night party, get this:
     Showed up at my house with champagne and sympathy and proceeded to tell me how wonderful my daughter was. What a Pal!  What a Pal!

Found, via Meetup: Best Salsa Dancing Venue Ever!

Meetup.com is an awesome website!  If you are new in a town, or bored in your same-'ol town, or just want to add some variety to your life, meetup.com could be a great source of Fun and Adventure.
How cool is this: outdoor salsa dancing at a Cuban-owned winery.  There was, of course, a wine tasting. :-) The sun came in and out while a band played. Dozens of us danced on a big round patio alongside a water fountain and lavender.  

DH deserves all the credit for making this Adventure happen.  Ms. Pippin here was getting cranky about our infrequent dancing.  DH was sympathetic, being the avid salsero (salsa aficionado) that he is.  The problem is, most salsa events start so late at night, and we are, ahem, Feeling Old when we try to dance too late.  Well, folks, this may not be a long-term solution to our problem, but if we keep up this level of creativity and initiative, we may find more salsa events that match our schedules.

Salsa Dancer and Teacher Extraordinaire, George Caceres organized the Meetup (and gets credit for the photos). You can find some of his classes here. 
Cubanismo Vinyards is Outside of Salem, Oregon.  Mauricio, the owner, is very friendly.  My favorite wines were the rosados (rosés).  There will be lessons and dancing there again on June 19th and  July 17th.  

Ladies' Spring Tea Party

Another fun idea: Send off spring with a tea party!  (The old fashioned kind.  No politics here.)  The Bossies are planning this year's tea party.  Here is a picture from last year's success:

Spring hats, gloves, vintage aprons and tablecloths, flowers, tea, scones...  Perhaps we had a smidgen more cocktails in our tea cups than actual tea...  Bossie Kristy studied up on how to read tea leaves and we all took turns trying to read the leaves in the bottom of our cups.  By the end of the party we were all singing gospel music together.  Two of the Bossies were so inspired, they started a community choir soon after!

Community organizing or not, this is a super fun idea for a party.  Especially when you have a bunch of people with indeterminate schedules.  You can have 25 people or 5 people; its fun either way.  Just ask them to bring tea and little tea-party type snackies.  Cucumber sandwiches, anyone?

Finding Fun

As Pacific Northwesterners know, you can't let the rain stop you.  Go PLAY in the rain!

My little niece is so exuberant and fun.  I love the look on her face in this photo.  And the fact that I am airborne.
The scrapbooking  materials are primarily from a kit from  Personal Scrapper.

Yummy happy holiday lemonade out of lemons

Ah, the holidays. Oh, the joys and the miseries of dealing with our loved ones. Have you found yourself complaining to a friend about an upcoming family event? You just know that Aunt So-and-So is going to make a snotty remark about your children. Uncle so and so will get drunk. Your brother's new girlfriend is too perfectly skinny and far along on her career and just knows it. Grandma will say something racist. Your nephew will sneeze without covering his mouth. Do you have this sort of list of things that drive you crazy that you just KNOW are going to happen and you just HATE dealing with? Does your friend that you've been complaining/kvetching/whining/moaning/"oh, yeah, well, listen to this one..." with - does she or he have this sort of list too??????

Bossy Girls to the rescue with a way to make this FUN: Have a race!

1. Write up a list of all those awful things that your relatives do. Your friend does the same.

2. Decide to have a race to:

--- see who can check the most things off within a certain amount of time

--- or compete to see who can check the most things off

--- or set up the race in any way that makes you happy!

3. Set up a scoring system if you want to get really really into this. Perhaps you can get extra points if a family member does their dreaded (now highly anticipated) thing more than once.

3. Arrange to check in with each other either as things happen, or every hour, or once a day, or? via text message or phone call or? to see if you are "winning". See? Now you are actually looking FOWARD to witnessing these awful behaviors. Now, when your sister does that annoying thing that used to make you cringe, you will think, "AHA! Chhhheck that off my list! I'm gonna win win win!

4. Whoever wins has to take the other out to lunch, or cook the other dinner, or treat the other to an afternoon out for a manicure, or?

Giving credit where credit is due: your head bossy girl over here read this beautiful idea in an Oprah magazine many many moons ago. I do not remember the year or the issue, let alone the author. If anyone knows this, please let me know in a comment so credit can be given. :-)

Halloween at the Lone Fir Cemetery

Why be normal, especially on Halloween? Forget bobbing for apples or drinking pumpkin beer in a bar. And our kids are too old for trick or treating. Some of us Bossy Girls enthusiastically volunteered at the Lone Fir Cemetery's Tour of Untimely Departures. The oldest cemetery in Portland has a tour every Halloween with actors at several graves portraying the people buried there. How cool is that?

The cemetery is everything you imagine a cemetery should look like, especially for Halloween: huge trees, elaborate tombstones, moss, falling leaves...

I ended up an actress myself for a while, being in the right place at the right time when the tour groups were getting backed up waiting for the ones in front. "Slow them down over there!" one of the organizers said. "Over there?" I asked, "I know that tombstone and that story." So I went and improvised portraying Mary Alice Oberly, who was buried there. Actually, she used to be buried there, but her sister was so mortified that Alice's male "customers" had paid for such an elaborate and large tombstone, that she had the epitaph erased and Alice's body moved to another cemetery. Ooh, I just love to play a bad girl! Now I really wish I knew all about what Mary Alice Oberly was really like.

Bossy Girls say: Step outside the box for holiday activities! Google away and you may be surprised to find out what activities are happening where you live. (I know, I know, we can't all live in fabbity-fab Portland Oregon, but I'm sure there are some cool things happening elsewhere, too.) Volunteer somewhere. Research old traditions and incorporate them when you throw a party at your own house. Make it a potluck if you are broke! What else can you think of?