The Holiday Tea is a Misawa Officers Spouses Club event, since I am on the board as Special Activities along with my Co-Chair Kat... This is an event that is free to members and we also invite Japanese Nationals to join us, Mostly civic leaders wives, JASDF (Japanese Air Self Defense Force) wives, and community groups. It was a really cool even where we shared our cultures with each other, and give the Japanese a taste of American food and American Christmas. This is the arrangement from my dining room table. Our colors were Blue white and silver and soft gold! Our theme was snowlfakes. When you invite a Japanese person to your house or event instead of them bringing a housewarming gift, you give them a presento.... so our presentos to the Japanese guests were this snowflake bottle stoppers! They were super cute and the Japanese LOVED them!
We has assigned seating so that the Japanese would not all sit at one table and then the Americans sit at a different table. We did two Japanese then two Americans till we had 8 at a table. These are the table numbers Kat made, the craft store here is so lame that all they had NO blue paper so we did white card stock with blue snowflake stamps which glitter vellum over the top tied with yarn! it turned out really cute... then we had those clear glass bulbs around the silver chargers for a craft we did... you'll see more of that later
We had two kinds of centerpieces, winter branches and these fresh evergreen arrangements with blue and silver Christmas balls and pine cones and glittery snowflakes!
One of the example balls we had on all the tables for the craft.
Here is the other centerpiece of branches that we spray painted white with touches of soft gold, coming out of a hurricane filled with fake snow!
The brains behind this whole thing, on the left Laura (our faithful and much appreciated helper) Kat (my co-chair) and ME
People who did not have assigned seats could pick up their place cards and put them on the seats they wanted, we had these strips of white card stock with a gold embossed snowflake held in a white and muted gold spray painted pinecone.
We had a gift exchange, combat style, and the Japanese were not shy about stealing gifts! it was great! then we did our craft and the Japanese had a good time decorating their ornaments along with the Americans. We had tinsel, curling ribbon and white feathers people could put inside their ornaments and gold paint pens for people to write on them.
Here the Japanese lady at my table is writing on my ball, so no I have a really awesome hand made Christmas ornament with Merry Christmas written in Japanese.
I think I will go ahead and say the holiday tea was a great success!
The ropeway was closed due to high winds but there is a little chair lift next to the ropeway that we did some runs on (you can pay per run or by hour) you can see how much snow there was, every run was like going down for the first time cause it was snowing so hard it covered up all the tracks
Derick and I riding up on the chair lift
After skiing Derick and I went snowshoeing with Kona, the snowshoes Tony and Tammy got us worked better then we could have ever imagined, they were great and I am so glad we have them!
Kona had to jump to take a step the snow was so deep
On the road back home by the Sukayu Onsen
Derick and Kona on the drive home, Kona loves her daddy and her daddy thinks she is SOOO cute!
