This tea party is on the move

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Other than a purple teapot festooned with a yellow bonnet and sporting collagenized red lips below the name, "T2U," Kathey Ditzler's and Nadine Skougard's aluminum tow trailer looks pretty average on the outside. But that's not the case on the inside.

Wallpaper-covered walls lined with varied-colored hats, frilly boas, colorful teapots on their own little resting spots, floor-to-ceiling lace curtains and enough doily-covered tables and chairs for six couples greet party-goers who come to have tea and learn a little etiquette along the way.

"The etiquette part is important since very few of us are really taught it," said Skougard, who last worked as a former assistant to U.S. Immigration Court Judge Irene Weiss in Las Vegas. "We can even help Girl Scouts who are earning their etiquette Honor Badge."

What Ditzler and Skougard have come up with is T2U, a mobile tea house that can drive up to any home in Clark County and within a matter of minutes take mothers and daughters, fathers and sons or husbands and wives on a fantasy journey far better than Alice's disappointing experience with the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse.

It's a unique adventure -- Skougard claims their research has failed to uncover anything like it -- that just evolved over time.

"The idea of a tea room like this came to me last March and I just kept working on it," said Ditzler, owner of Expressions by Kathey, where she's been styling hair in Boulder City for the last four years. "We thought about party packages where you bring your own supplies and do your own party in the home and doing catered teas, but we didn't want to do that. Then, all of a sudden, it came to me -- Why not visit them and take the tea room there?"

Two weeks ago, the two businesswomen launched their company with their first mother-daughter tea party at their office location on Foothill Court in Boulder City.

There were four mother-daughter couples wearing fashionably designed dresses, accessorized with hats and gloves, looking like they had just stepped out of Vogue magazine.

After getting settled in with Ditzler explaining a few "housekeeping" ideas, it was time for Miss Trudy -- the talking teapot -- to take over.

Speaking about the cranberry-colored cloth article on the table, Miss Trudy said, "This is not a napkin. That's something you get at McDonald's or Burger King. This is a serviette. Can you all say serviette? Place the serviette in your lap. To use your serviette, fold it in half." The dialogue on the proper usage continued.

"Isn't this fun so far?" Miss Trudy asked.

The girls -- 10-year-old Kellie Clove, 8-year-old Brayana Davis, 10-year-old Olivia Fikes and Chaise Taylor, who celebrated her 11th birthday that day -- sat spellbound with little to say.

"It's pretty cool," said the birthday girl, who was joined by her mom, Paula.

Brayana, who sat with her mother, Carla, could only say, "Cool."

Olivia's mom, Michelle, heard her daughter say, "I like it," but Kellie was speechless and needed her mother, Karen, to say, "She's in awe. She didn't know what to expect when she came here."

With serviettes in place, Skougard brought out the orange-spice Constant Comment tea she had brewed for the mothers and apple juice for the classy younger set.

"The kids can have decaffeinated tea or pearl tea (tea thinned considerably with milk) or apple juice," Skougard said.

Tea, of course, starts the two-hour party odyssey, which is followed by four other courses -- fruits and finger sandwiches, including the ever-popular cucumber slice on bread, then scones and breads with assorted jams and jellies, a sorbet to cleanse the palate, and then it's all topped off with dessert, which can be cookies, brownies or even those iced sponge cake squares called petit fours.

But wait, there's even more.

"They also get a 4-by-6 framed photo of the group with Miss Trudy and a miniature porcelain tea set," Ditzler said. "We wanted to make sure we gave each child a gift when they leave because we want this to be one of their fondest childhood memories."

A basic party for up to six runs $295, with a $25 charge per additional person.

Home parties are OK for now, say the two, but the businesswomen are looking to branch out into another option.

"We want to do office teas, teas at the office, which would take an hour," Ditzler said. "That way anybody wanting to come could get a break from the office and the phones. They can sit and have a quiet time where they could just talk."

For now, though, the two women are content to take their T2U mobile tea room to anyone's home for a kid's birthday or some other party, provided they have adequate parking for the unit 55 feet in length, in which they have about $110,000 invested.

After all, as Skougard likes to say, "Why give them a pizza when you can give them a memory?"