Every month our department has a morning tea for the birthdays within the month and a chance to catch up with each other. Each team within the department has 3 months per year that they are responsible for.

Our team has a reputation for going the extra mile when it comes to morning teas. This is our effort from this month – I thought it was a great topic for this months Ambience photo challenge.

We look at the months we’ve been given and think about what is happening in that month, then plan the morning tea around that event. This month we have Australia Day on the 26th January, plus it’s summer (or hell as I like to call it) so we went with an Australia Day beach theme.

Among other things on the table, we had:

• a giant blow up flip-flop (or as the Aussies call it and I refuse to call it, a ‘thong’, us Kiwi’s know it as a ‘jandal’)
• koala’s hanging from palm trees (plus a token kiwi for me, complete with the weirdest NZ flag I’ve ever seen)
• plates, balloons and bunting with the Australian flag emblazoned on them
• a very cool Aussie fruit flag 
• a sausage sizzle (the staple of an Aussie weekend when going to Bunnings or similar)
• and the most amazing cake showing iconic Aussie items such as a bbq with prawns on it (Note: don’t say to an Aussie “throw another shrimp on the barbie” .. they’re prawns not shrimp!), a classic meat pie with some tomato sauce, a jar of vegemite (I’m not even going to attempt to describe vegemite for those who don’t know what it is) and of course a lamington (sponge cake covered in a thin layer of chocolate & coconut – very good with raspberry jam & cream in the middle. Also known as a ‘lammo’ because Aussies abbreviate EVERYTHING!!). This was made by our bosses daughter and it was bloody amazing & tasted really good!

I know it’s kind of cheating because you’re only meant to put up one photo, but I’ve added some more photos below of the morning tea:

via Photo Challenge: Ambience