Christmas Fiestas and carousels

This past week just flew by!  I had a bunch of last minute things to do before Christmas (I procrastinate way too much) and did not get a chance to post my Christmas party to the tea parties this week, so I figured I should post it now, before Christmas week is over.  This week's tea party features my dining room, which has a carousel themed tree.

 

Here is a better look at some of the décor:

 

(my Asian china cabinet with its Christmas finery)

 

 



(my new acquisition from a couple of weeks ago.  I've been wanting a teacup rack that I could display teacups in for years, and finally found one in a local shop.  Do three of the cups look familiar?  This is the home of the three English bone china cups on the left that showed up in my Williamsburg tea party last week.  The cardinal cup and saucer set on the end is Gracie China I found at Homegoods).  

We are here to party though, so here is the table made up for a late lunch/early dinner I held for some friends last Saturday.

I found a whole set of paper products (dinner plates and napkins, dessert plates and napkins) of the pretty Spode design in Marshalls.  If you look closely, you can see punch cups at every place setting, which I bought to hold sangria.  You might be asking why I made sangria--I had a Mexican Christmas fiesta!  I served pre-dinner snacks of chips and layer dip, salsa and guacamole.  For the actual dinner, I served Mexican lasagna, salad, and homemade cornbread.  For dessert I had a buffet of different goodies:

tres leches cupcakes with eggnog

(so I guess that makes them quatro leches cupcakes?  I found the recipe for these cupcakes on the Growing up Bilingual blog, although I used plan whipped cream for the topping instead of the buttercream frosting called for in the recipe)

 

brownies and magic bars

 

and assorted cookies from my neighborhood cookie exchange.  

 

But back to the tree.  My carousel tree is gold, purple, and red, with large gold stars and purple and red balls.

I've been collecting carousel ornaments since I was a child, and was really excited when I realized I had enough to fill a full sized tree.   The tree is topped with a multi-colored star topper.  This is my only tree with colored lights, which I think goes along with the carnival feel of the tree (since it is full of carousels!).   

 

 

A couple of birds perch on the tree's limbs, adding more texture and flare to the tree. 

 

The carousel ornaments are everything from the expected horses,

 

 

 

to the exotic,

 

to the fantastic.  

 

This Christmas was great for the tree--I received nine new ornaments from my sister and my parents, including this beautiful Pegasus by Nene Thomas from my sister.

 

 

There were some beautiful horses, 

 

and some additional wild animals.

 

I had just broken my giraffe carousel ornament at the beginning of the season, and my sister made sure that she ordered me a new one as one of the set of new ornaments.

 

 

I had a wonderful Christmas especially since I had a chance last week to get together with my friends and family.

 

Feliz Navidad

 Prospero Año y Felicidad