Teacup Tales

Please join me as we discover or rediscover some tea time accessories that often go unnoticed. While the teapots and teacups garner all the attention, other items deserve praise as well. They embellish our tablescapes and provide for a well rounded tea service. Tea Caddies or Tea Bag Holders This small accessory is a must if you are serving bagged tea. It provides a place to rest a steeped tea bag without a mess. A guest may also place a spoon on it as well. Here are a few of my gifted bone china holders. Porcelain one from a 2016 Teacup Exchange Plastic ones which are ideal for a casual outdoor tea A very special royal one! My Anglophile friend gifted me this one after attending the wedding as a spectator. I prefer drinking loose tea, but I do have a variety of teabags on hand. I notice my new-to-tea friends prefer choosing a certain tea in bag form than a given tea from a teapot. Thank you for visiting and come by again ...

Hello Tea Friends, This summer I was blessed to travel to London. Our schedule was tight and there wasn't that much time for antique shopping. I've always wanted to go to the booths and stores on Portobello Road.  It just seems like a dream place for antique and tea cup collectors. I could spend literally hours sifting through all of the tea cups in search of a Shelley (my favorite). (Internet stock image) Such fun exploring! My close friend arrived in London a week after we left. She is a complete Anglophile and visits London quite frequently. I've taught her a bit about afternoon tea and my favorite potteries. For the last couple of years she has searched for a Shelley among the tables of teacups to no avail. Finally this past June she found the most exquisite pre-Shelley teacup and saucer in pristine condition and gifted it to me for my birthday. Foley   Antique Cup Shape or early Queen Anne Some History The original "Shelley...

Happy New Year! Happy Winter Time! Hello Tea Friends, I hope this finds you well and refreshed. While I certainly enjoyed my share of holiday teas this season, I was pleasantly surprised to experience some tropical tastes yesterday during tea time. I wanted to start the new year by going to afternoon tea at a local tearoom. Our first course was ambrosia salad served in a teacup. This took me back to my childhood as ambrosia was a fun sweet treat.  The dusting of cinnamon on the salad was wonderful and a fun, interesting start to our tea time. I selected a flavored black tea: Pina Colada. I really enjoyed its smoothness and the cute cottage teapot. The rest of our afternoon tea was the standard wonderfulness and boy was I full at the end. I even had to bring some of the sweets home. Before the holidays, I ordered two bags of "Coconut" from adagio teas along with a favorite blend of theirs ~ Pumpkin Spice. I really enjoy the mild sweet...

Hello Tea Friends, It is so wonderful to be back blogging! I certainly apologize for my blogging break. Simply put, life just got in the way. I think I put too high of expectations on myself regarding my blogging schedule.  My love of tea, blogging and most importantly the online friendship connections I've made have led me back. I look forward to sharing when I can and visiting your wonderful blogs. View flying into Cork Airport As many of you may remember, my mom was born in Ireland and all of her family still lives there today. Thanks to low summer airfares I journeyed to London and Cork, Ireland. It was truly a magnificent trip. I have really missed my aunts, uncles and cousins. We stayed at the lovely and quaint Arosfa Hotel in the Bloomsbury area of London. I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the back courtyard, reading, enjoying tea and listening to the chatter of the songbirds. It was a nice respite from the busy streets of London. While In London and Cork...

Hello Tea Friends, I have been so excited to share this post with you. For the third time, I participated in sweet Stephanie's teacup exchange through her blog  The Enchanting Rose . Once again I'm overwhelmed with the creativity and generosity of my exchange partner. Sandy of  Simply Sandy  certainly spoiled me. Please, come take a look. Even with Hurricane Matthew raging, Sandy delivered an amazing assortment of tea related treasures.  She expertly managed to place all of the items in this pretty fall themed box~ a perfect storage for fall themed teacups. Orange is my favorite color and Sandy gifted me with a set of these pretty orange/white napkins which will be used for afternoon tea. So dainty! I love them. When I'm out at a restaurant and forget my tea, I always regret it. The selection is always so limited. Now I have this wonderful teabag holder from Stephanie's Etsy Shop  to hold my favorite teas. Love the lace pocke...

Hello Tea Friends, There are so many wonderful things about autumn!  One of them being pumpkins! (The pumpkin display to the left is from a local quilt show I attended at a garden nursery.) I love decorating with pumpkins and of course cooking with them. They seem to embody the "taste" of autumn. This year I decided I needed to bring the taste of pumpkin to my actual tea. While ordering more masala chai from adagio tea, I decided to try their pumpkin spice tea after reading positive online reviews. I don't know if I actually taste pumpkin, but there is a sweetness similar to one found in rooibis. It makes for a nice autumn tea and will complement many spiced baked treats. (Sorry for the rather blah photos.) Last week I baked chocolate chip pumpkin bread using a recipe I found on Pinterest. My family liked it, but I felt it was just "okay." The chocolate overshadowed the pumpkin taste in my opinion. So this weekend, I baked my tried and t...

"I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded."                           ~Song of Solomon 6:11 When we moved into our home six years ago, I was so happy to learn that the pretty tree with the poppy colored flower buds was indeed a pomegranate tree.   Last Thursday, I took this photo as I planned for a pomegranate post. This year's tree had the most pomegranates on it and the fruits formed early. Usually I pick them in November, but seems to get earlier each year.   Sometime during the night on Friday, half of the tree fell over from being too top heavy with fruit. I was so surprised to wake up and see this. I cut the pomegranates from the fallen branches and hope they will be ripe enough to eat. This is partly my fault. We should have trimmed the tree last spring. I'm just hoping the remainder of the tree w...