windinthemaples | First Annual Midsummer Faerie Celebration: Arrival and Tea Party

This past weekend, I flew to New York to take part in Sarah

mermaiden and Jenn

willow_cabin's First Annual Midsummer Faerie Celebration, an outdoor costumed tea party the hostesses had been dreaming up for awhile. I can't imagine a more perfect community in which to celebrate Litha, the turning of the seasons from growing light to growing darkness.

Friday, after a day spent in a Rosemont hotel entertaining Graeme while Daniel spoke at an expert witness conference, I got all glammed up and went to the airport. I *love* flying to New York because it is the quickest flight, just an hour and a half, so travel doesn't take all day the way a lot of our destinations do. I had on some high heeled espadrilles, though, and the miles-long walk through O'Hare was less then comfy. Oh, vanity! :D I just loved knowing I wouldn't have to carry a toddler around, so it felt like I could get away with all kinds of things. :) Getting to Buffalo, I was pretty distracted. I'd arranged Rhiannon

rubymulligan's flight to arrive around mine but I couldn't remember if she was coming in a little ahead of my schedule or a little behind. Should I try to find her gate and wait there, or go out and get my bag at the baggage claim? She wasn't answering her phone and I was feeling very responsible for her. I wasn't even sure who would be picking us up! I figured I'd head out to get my luggage. And there, already waiting just outside security, lined up and grinning and waving with great excitement were Sarah and Jenn, as well as Lena

lenaperry and Karyn

belladonnastrap, the first guests who'd arrived earlier in the day. Lena even had a bakery box with two vegan cupcakes for us in her hands! Ha! In a movie, I'd have run crying down the hallway and thrown myself in their arms, but instead it was like, "Oh, hey, good to meet you/see you again. Have you heard from Rhiannon? What should we do? I'm worried about Rhiannon. I wish I'd printed out her flight information. Do you know her flight information?" while blocking the exit from security. :D In time, Rhiannon resurfaced, my luggage circled around on the claim belt, and we piled ourselves into two cars for the drive to Sarah and Jenn's house.

I'd met most of the other Faerie Celebration guests in previous visits to New York or at Spoutwood Farm's Faerie Festival this year.

lenaperry and

belladonnastrap, though, I knew only by reputation as good friends of my good friends. It was *so* lovely to meet them and expand my circle of kin. They are both extraordinarily nice, interesting witches. :) Lena drove in from Canada and has a faint, adorable accent that sounds a bit Scots and Karyn is a loud, proud New York (City)-er. It was late when we got home, and the two of them started staking out their spots to sleep on the couch and loveseat in the living room.

rubymulligan much to our group's amusement, had brought a tent, inflatable mattress, sleeping bag, camp lantern, battery-operated twinkle lights, and pillow in her suitcase. She started wrestling all of this out on the back deck while we helped (a little) and spectated/heckled good-naturedly (a lot!). It was so cute and so funny and a rather brilliant way to get away from the pet dander and stuff she's allergic to.

At bedtime, I had to decide where to sleep. There was a pile of blankets and an air mattress set up for me in the living room or room in Rhiannon's tent on the back deck. I didn't have any camping equipment with me beyond a pillow and a super light-weight blanket, but the pet smells were getting to my sinuses by then, so I decided to try the tent. I can say it was a laugh-riot, anyway, as the two of us attempted to work out a system to share the tent. I didn't have a ground cover, and we didn't want to use the furry blankets inside, so Rhiannon folded up her sleeping bag so I could lay on top of it and I had my blanket from home to wrap up in. We laughed like hyenas trying to wrestle all of this together and we went, very quickly, from two beds to one cobbled-together bed. I slept, because it is a super-power of mine to sleep anywhere instantly, but apparently Rhiannon just laid in her tent and tried not to move or disturb me. Around 2:30am, I woke up frozen half-to-death and hot-blooded Rhiannon had to admit even she was freezing without the benefit of her sleeping bag. I decided that really, it didn't make sense for her to suffer for me, so I went back inside, crashed out on the air mattress, shivered uncontrollably for a good ten minutes no matter how many blankets I piled on top of myself before finally falling asleep.

I woke up to the sounds of Lena and Karyn talking about me, speculating about how I ended up in their room, and making a lot of jokes about how I was really just crazy hair sticking out the top of a haphazard pile of blankets. I would have slept for hours more. The whole weekend was about not-much-sleep, in a variety of ways. That just prepared me for it. :)

(We've finally gotten to where I started using my camera.)

Rhiannon was up early, too, so we joined her outside at her tent and had a perfume sniffing/testing extravaganza. She's the maker of The Misery/Love Co. and had brought sample sizes of her company's entire perfume oil catalog. (OMG.) I was dotting myself with perfumes to test, all up and down my arm, and she had some awesome summer scents that I must-buy like the green grass, sun, and sweet honey of The Lion and the Bee and the strangely compelling cola and buttered popcorn movie theater scent, The Cameo. She has a bionic nose and I love her new stuff even more then the old, which is hard to do. :)

Jenn and Sarah woke up and after a breakfast of berries and bagels, we all tied on aprons and started working on the baking and sweets-making for the afternoon's tea party. Karyn and Sarah made cupcakes (lemon and chai) while Rhiannon and I made vegan peanut butter cups, and Jenn worked out in the misty, raining, meadow back yard to decorate the party space. Lena wasn't feeling well, unfortunately, and held court from the sofa with some mint tea and pillows.

By early afternoon, Maddie

lathriel, Katie

costumenut, and Pete

roofpig13 had arrived and brought more cupcakes and whatnot with them. The rain, which had remained rather light and steady for most the day, let up with one glorious ray of warm sun and we all snatched the opportunity to change into our faerie getups and start shuttling the food to the tables set up outside under the trees and among the wildflowers. Sarah's sister, Laura

atempestcyclone, arrived just in time, too! The rain had brought out the mosquitoes but it also made the scene, the lighting, so beautiful and misty and unreal. We laid out blankets and met up for the tea party, all glittery and beautified. The tables were set with brilliant fruits and platters of cupcakes, cookies and candies and little white bread sandwiches with cucumbers, all sorts of dips and crackers and happylon.

The hostesses started by opening a big picnic hamper with our party favors--mismatched vintage cups and saucers they'd picked out for each one of us from many many thrift store searches. They were tied up in netting and inside the cup, for each, a chosen-for-us Glamourkin. Pretty freaking great.

We ate, stuffed ourselves silly, really, and doused ourselves with cedar oil in an attempt to ward off the biting insects. After lots of food and laughter and sugar, we started taking photos of each other and lazing around on the blankets in a bit of a food coma. :D After that, we changed into comfier clothes and spent time hula hooping, blowing bubbles, jumping rope, attempting to Skip-It, and otherwise having summer lawn sports. :) So, on to the photos!

Rhiannon and Lena in their faerie finery.

The food!

Tea and lemonade.

The hostesses with the mostesses pass out everyone's party favor tea cups/saucers/Glamourkins.

My teacup and Glamourkin.

Maddie.

Jenn.

Sarah.

Karyn.

Lena.

Laura.

Pete and Katie.

Me and Rhi.

There was a lot of laughing and joking and more than a few off-color jokes. When one was directed at Jenn, she delivered this death look. "Is that for me?", Rhi asked. Jenn said, "That was for everyone." ;)

Good fairies.

Bruiser fairies.

Sarah teaches us to hoop.

I figured it out!!

Most everyone was going to camp in the backyard for novelties sake on Saturday night, so we spent twilight hours having a little ritual conspiracy ala Diana's Grove and pitching tents. Sarah and Jenn had a thrift store tent that they unfurled to discover it was a tiny little old-fashioned pup tent. I don't know about other people, but I was sick with laughter and delight. It was so cute, so little, so funny to imagine them sleeping in it. Awesome photo ops. :D

Such a wonderful day! In future posts, I'll write about the ritual and the rest of our weekend. There is so much to cover!! In the meantime, many many many more photos from Saturday are up on my Flickr site.

PS- Oh, another little thing. During the weekend, Sarah and Jenn passed around a wooden box filled with a tumble of crystals and minerals in every color. We each picked one randomly as a divination/intention/gift of the weekend. Mine, a marbled thing I'd never seen before, was fossilized fern, which Sarah said was for remembrances. Pretty awesome. :) I know my memories of this weekend are fixed in stone.