Dottie: Dahlink! I’m making reservations for us! We’ve had quite a year….I’ve decided we deserve a little Modern Kiddo holiday party celebration so it’s high tea at the Palace Hotel!

Alix: Ooooh, that sounds amazing. Argh, I’m so slammed at work though…are you sure we’ll have time? I know you are crazy busy too.

Dottie: Lady, I’m not taking no for an answer. We are finding the time! We need this!

30 minutes later

Dottie: We’re booked! I can’t wait.

Alix: Hurray! I can’t wait either. Where did you say we were meeting?

Dottie: The Palace Hotel!

Alix: Fabulous!

3 days later.

Dottie: Hey, do you remember what time I said we were meeting for tea?

Alix: I think it was 2:00 next Thursday…oh and where is it again?

Dottie: The Palace! You’ll love it.

Alix: Yes! I can’t wait.

1 week later.

Dottie: Thursday is our tea! YAY! You can still go, right?

Alix: I know I’m so excited!!! YAY! I’ll totally be there. Um, where are we meeting again??

3 days later, Thursday. Tea Day!

Alix: Oh my god, Dottie. Please don’t kill me….

Dottie: What’s wrong? You can still meet for tea, right??

Alix: Yes totally! It’s just….I forgot the name of the place where we’re meeting.

I wish I was embellishing this story to be funny, but alas I really did ask poor Dottie like FIVE TIMES for the name of the place. And you’d THINK I’d remember something as glammy as the Palace Hotel. In my defense I was sick as a dog, it was raining buckets all week and I every time we talked all I heard was “Tea! With Dottie! YAY!” What this story illustrates is how sweet, generous and PATIENT Miss Dottie is. I tell ya. So yes friends….we met at the glorious PALACE HOTEL…which has this insanely lovely atrium. It’s all glass ceilings and chandeliers and a HUGE Christmas tree in the middle of it all.

Darling Dottie showed up in a reeeeally cute little vintage ensemble including a special holly berry Christmas scarf.

She promptly ordered us The Royal Tea which came with some SUPER yummy little tea sammies (my favorites? Bosch Pear with Point Reyes Blue Cheese Cream and Honey and the Cucumber with Sun Dried Tomato Mousse….heaven!). Then out came the little the tiered pastry platter, piled high with tea cakes:

Decadent and delicious! For the tea itself I chose their special Oriental Spice (a warm and spicy blend with orange peel, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon—perfection with a splash of milk and honey!) and Dottie chose the elegant classic, Earl Grey. BUT the best part of The Royal Tea is that it comes with a small bottle of champagne….which was so tasty that you JUST MIGHT want to order a second bottle. And which we promptly did, thank you very much.

We had a terrific afternoon—engaging in fun and silly blogger gossip (“Can you believe she gets over 700,000 hits a month! Amazing…I die!”) and touching upon our goals for modern kiddo (“I really want to start vlogging” and “We could totally be on Martha, right??”). Ultimately we decided that the main focus should be less about what else we could be doing and more about all the things we had already accomplished and were most proud of. We toasted how far modern kiddo has come, we toasted our favorite moments of the year, we toasted how cool our readers were and most importantly we toasted our friendship—which has grown by leaps and bounds over the course of 2010. And that my friends is worth way more than a MILLION hits a month.

*clink*

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