Easter celebrations

Once every few years,  Easter weekend is special to us, because my middle daughter and I celebrate our birthday as well. When Easter is late, I celebrate mine. When Easter is early, like this year, we celebrate hers.  

I was up at six on Saturday morning, to put up the bunting and add the finishing touches to a cake,  which I baked the day before. I chose a wheat free, low fat Easter cake from the book Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell, of which I changed the recipe a little. I used saffron to colour the icing and beetroot to colour the cake.

To get the speckled effect, I used a mixture of cocoa and vanilla essence, which I flicked at the cake with a tooth brush. My kitchen and I were covered in tiny chocolate specks, but most important: the cake looked better than I hoped for.   

In today's post,  photo's of our Easter breakfast table and Afternoon birthday tea. The vintage table cloths were incredibly lucky charity shop finds (almost missed them).  The colours are bright and sunny, and perfect for Easter. The embroidery on one of them is exceptionally beautiful. It makes me wonder if there are still women who make tablecloths like this, or is it a pastime of a bygone era?

Wishing you a Happy Easter. Have fun!

Love,

Madelief x

Instagram tea

Just a quick post to show you some photo's of a wonderful tea party I had in the garden. Eleven kind and interesting ladies, that I know through Instagram, joined me.

I can't tell you how inspiring and much fun it is to come together with like minded people. .

The ladies that joined me today are all so talented: running shops, baking the most delicious things, making beautiful floral arrangements, sewing historic clothes, organising children's workshops, making crochet masterpieces..... Lucky me to have them at my table, to hear their stories, get advise and give me ideas.

Dear Ilse, Saskia, Lia, Jolanda, Chantal, Mirjam, Ella, Nicole, Miriam, Lia and Nathalie: thank you so much for taking the time to come all the way to Rotterdam.  I had an absolutely lovely day!

I am off to the couch now to put my feet up!

Wishing you all a great week!

Love,

Madelief x

With special thanks to Ilse for helping me out today. Dear Ilse, I couldn't have done it without you! xox

Tea anyone?

It may be that you see this post for the 2nd time. I posted it last Sunday, but somehow it did not appear in my time line. Don't really know what happened. Apologies and thank you to the sweet ladies who left a comment and to those of you who already had a look.

Before I start this post, I have to tell you that I am not that much into advertising on my blog. With a job and a busy private life, I don't like to have too much obligations.

However, when Golden Tips tea from India asked me to taste their tea, it did not take me long to decide. Being a huge tea lover. I prefer to drink my tea with milk. Or as they say in The Netherlands, the English way :-)  Ever since my early teens I have had a passion for tea. You can imagine my excitement when Golden Tips sent me an email.

The tea arrived in a sealed box. As I am not that much of a green tea or Chai tea lover, I was sent several varieties of Assam and Darjeeling. The tea came from different estates in India. I enjoyed reading the details on the packing, like the date the tea was picked, first flushes or second flushes, sort of blends, the grades and speciality. It made the tea come alive. The teas have names like: Mankota Exotic Assam, Goomtee Darjeeling Arya Ruby Darjeeling Castleton Moonlight. How romantic can tea drinking be :-)

I was really curious to see whether I would taste the difference between the tea I normally drink and Golden Tips tea. I could not have imagined the difference being so great. The taste of the Golden Tips tea is so much better!  Some blends have a fruity flavour, while others have a distinct nutty taste. The words that describe the way I experienced the tea best are 'delicate' and 'aromatic'.

I can very much recommend them to you. For more information about the tea, please have a look at the website of Golden Tips. You can order the tea online.

I added a few old and new vintage teacup finds to this post. Hoping you would like it.

Wishing you a Happy week!

Love,

Madelief x