Finding tea on a visit to Saint Simons Island

I recently returned from spending a delightful week on Saint Simons Island, where my friend Angela has a home, and I came back with lots of great memories, fun finds, and inspiration from a part of coastal Georgia I’d never visited before. This island isn’t far from Savannah, which I’ve visited many times, yet I’d somehow never made it to Saint Simons, and I loved it!



As a longtime water lover, I’d been wanting to go back to the beach for a couple of years now, but somehow, I couldn’t go back to the (many) beaches I had visited with my husband. Not yet. But since this was a beach I’d never visited before, it was the perfect getaway, and I so enjoyed wading in the water, collecting seashells, and eating some great seafood.



To my surprise and delight, a tea vendor I’d discovered a couple of years ago has a facility in nearby Brunswick, and when we drove over there for lunch one day, Angela gladly offered to stop by the Biron Tea Factory and Tasting Room.



I enjoyed seeing the pretty roses out front.



Inside, they had many teas brewing in glass pots, and you were welcome to try sample cups of tea.

The two I came home with? The Peach Blossom Black Tea at left and the Keemun tea at right, both of which I have already tried and greatly enjoyed. If you've not heard of Biron Teas, you can learn more about them here. A fun discovery while on vacation!

 

The puzzle winner is …

Frances L.! I've got an email headed your way. Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy putting this puzzle together!

Some fun mail from Harney & Sons

I miss catalogs. It used to be so fun to receive catalogs like the Lillian Vernon catalog (all those personalized goodies!) and the Victorian Trading Company catalog. I know that most companies have gone all-in on the online sales, but a happy little catalog in the mailbox always gets my attention, so I was delighted when this lovely publication from Harney & Sons showed up the other day.

It's part magazine, part catalog, and the combination is such a nice one. Here, for instance, I enjoyed reading about Mike Harney's travels to Africa, where the rooibos plant is grown.

And this page tells about "The Storied Legacy of British Teas." I'm keeping this publication, and plan to order soon, so they definitely hit a target customer with me! Did any of you receive this publication?

The other night, I was enjoying an evening walk through the neighborhood when I noticed that some white blossoms kept appearing along the side of the road. When I stepped in for a closer look, I couldn't help noticing how pretty the blossoms were, and I suspected they were blossoms on blackberry vines.

When I got home and looked it up on Google Lens, sure enough, these were future blackberries, and I thought they were so pretty. I was also reminded to check the blackberry vines that are growing in my backyard, because I would love to make a blackberry cobbler or blackberry muffins this summer. I guess blackberries were on the brain, because when I saw this Bigelow Blackberry Citrus Herbal Tea at Publix, I wanted to try it.

And I’m so glad I did! It’s such a pleasant blend of both the blackberry and citrus flavors, and while I’ve been enjoying it hot, I suspect it would be good as an iced tea as well. I also like to plop berry- and citrus-flavored tea bags in my water bottle to give a little zip to the water as well. Have any of you tried this Blackberry Citrus tea? Or any other blackberry teas?

 

Giveaway: A Mackenzie-Childs Blooming Kettle Puzzle!

While shopping at a HomeGoods store on Saturday, I came across this darling Mackenzie-Childs teakettle puzzle. Isn’t it great? I loved it so much that when I saw a second one, I decided it would make a great giveaway item!

Lately, I’ve purchased several puzzles that I intend to use as artwork, and maybe one of you would enjoy this puzzle as well. I mean, what tea lover wouldn’t enjoy some teatime art!

So if you’d like to win this puzzle, just leave an “Enter me” comment to this post, here or on Facebook, making sure I have a way to contact you if you’re the winner, and you’ll be entered to win. Deadline is Friday, May 1, at 7 a.m. EST. US only, please. Good luck!

The Summer 2026 Issue of Flea Market Décor Magazine

One of my favorite summer magazines has just appeared on newsstands, the summer issue of Flea Market Décor. I always love the vintage-garden vibe of this issue, and I was particularly delighted to see the funky old lamp on the cover, the one sitting atop the large pink table topper. You see, when I was growing up, my mom and dad had one of these oh-so-seventies lamps in their bedroom. Little droplets of oil ran down thin strands of some sort of filament, and I imagine it was the most elegant thing ever to hit our little country road in rural Buchanan, Georgia. As I studied the photo, I recalled that this memorable lamp hung over a corner of a bedroom that featured a king-sized bed with leopard-print bedclothes juxtaposed against walls papered in a swirly gold pattern with red-velvet flocking. I am not making this up. What in the name of Liberace do you suppose my Southern Baptist mother was thinking? But I digress.

Aside from the trips down memory lane that vintage articles always seem to launch, I enjoyed gleaning a few new tea-ish ideas from this issue. In almost every antique store I visit, I come across old glasses from various states across the land. Wouldn't it be fun to collect them as tea glasses?

And check out this mid-mod kitchen backsplash with a vintage tea advertisement hanging on it!

Another of my favorite sightings in this issue was a set of day-of-the-week tea towels. When did we stop using those? My guess is, when we gals hit the workforce and no longer had time to even consider daily décor in the kitchen. (And did you notice the charming typo? Or maybe I should say "stitch-o"?) This was quite a fun issue to pore over, and if you're looking for some fun weekend reading, here you go!

A fun new matcha drink

So how do we feel about matcha, friends? I don’t think I’ve written about matcha in a while, and it’s a variety of tea that usually has to grow on me. But then I saw this Strawberry Shortcake Matcha at a local coffee shop, Leaf and Bean, and had to give it a try. I had skipped lunch, so I decided to order this tea and a blueberry scone, which of course were more than filling!

I rarely order an iced tea or coffee drink in a coffee shop, but I wanted to try this one, an iced matcha sweetened with white chocolate and topped with strawberry cold foam. I enjoyed experiencing the different layers of the drink as I sipped, and this was a fun departure from my usual coffee shop order, a London Fog. Have any of you tried a "mixed" matcha drink like this one?

A visit to Botanic in Opelika

On Friday, I took a much-needed "mental health day," as I call it, to go thrifting in Opelika, Alabama, with my friend Liz. I found a wonderful vintage mirror I'd been looking for, and she found a vintage stool that was right up her alley, and when we finished, we headed to a place I'd been wanting to visit, Botanic. And there we are at the entrance to the greenhouse!

Botanic, which is owned by the woman who started Chicken Salad Chick, features several restaurants, a garden center, a lovely market shop, and more. When we stopped for lunch, we both ordered the Greek style crepe with grilled chicken (served in a cone-style stand), and it was delicious. I forgot to get a picture, but the hot jasmine tea I ordered was tasty as well!

As we ate, we both admired the plate wall nearby. These plate walls are all the rage in decorating magazines, and both Liz and I like them.

Speaking of decorating, Liz is also an interior decorator, and while we walked through the garden center, she mentioned that she thought this colorful lantana was the kind being sought by a client of hers. She asked if I would mind transporting a few plants, and of course I did not. 

They have wagons available for transporting plants, and a worker there kindly let Liz fill up the car to see how many it would hold. We ended up going home with 10 hanging baskets of lantana in my back seat!

Oh, and there were even beautiful swans in the lake there, although I forgot to go back and get a picture of them! So if you're in the Opelika area (or within driving distance) and want a nice new "ladies who lunch" spot where you can also enjoy a good cup of tea, check out Botanic!

A different kind of tea book

This is rather random for a Friday blog post, but my book-loving friend Liz spotted this unusual "tea set" at the Powell Library here in Newnan, and she snapped a photo and sent it to me. Is this not the coolest thing? And that's it. That's the post!

 

Sipping some springtime

When I went antiquing with a girlfriend back in February, I came across a vintage teacup for just six dollars that I thought would be perfect for springtime decorating. It sat on a shelf throughout Easter, but it dawned on me that I needed to actually drink out of this teacup too.

I think the yellow and purple colors as well as the green trim make this such a charming Easter/spring teacup, and the handle is interesting in that it's not a solid color, more like that sponge ware finish that was all the rage back in the eighties. (I checked photos of other pieces online, and they have this same finish on the handle.)

And it's by Royal Albert, which is always a plus. I consider this teacup six dollars well-spent!

A Garden Party Baby Shower!

On Friday night, some friends and I traveled to Macon for the CeCe Winans concert, which was as wonderful as I knew it would be, and then I was up bright and early Saturday morning to make cucumber sandwiches for my niece Amelia's baby shower! She and Korbin are having a girl, and little Ruby Jane (named in honor of my paternal grandmother, Ruby, as well as Aunt Jane) will be here in July. We love the two precious little boys in our family, but we are all very excited about the arrival of this little girl!

My sister decided to stage the garden party in the gazebo at my dad's, and she had a lovely (and tasty!) strawberry cake set up there, as well as cute cake pops made by one of Amelia's friends.

I loved how girly everything looked!

The tea station had both hot and cold teas. Rhonda pulled in some of my mom's Old Country Roses china, and it was so pretty on the tables. Mother would be thrilled!

We had mini pasta salads, a fruit tray …

Cucumber sandwiches, pimiento cheese sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, a veggie tray, and chicken salad and crackers.

My niece Madison decorated, and I loved these teapot banners that were waving in the breeze. It was a gorgeous morning, not too hot and not too cool, and we all enjoyed sitting in the outdoors as Amelia opened gifts.

Of course she received lots of cute outfits, and all the pink and ruffled things are right up my alley.

Our friend Sharon made the cutest baby diaper wreath I've ever seen. So much detail!

And this crocheted baby afghan? That was my gift!

I loved having tea parties with Amelia and her sisters Madison and Cari when they were little girls, and I am beyond excited about hosting tea parties for the next generation!

On pins and needles

Okay, fellow seamstresses. Do you know what this is? If not, you'll be on pins and needles until you find out, right?

Well, it's a vintage needle book, and I found it at an antique store a few weeks ago for just $6 and decided it needed to come home with me. Later, I saw a giant framed piece where someone had arranged their collection of vintage needle books behind glass. Clever idea, but I like to actually use my needle books.

And this one was marked "Made and Printed in West Germany," which tells me it dates from 1949 to 1990, and I'm betting it was from the fifties or sixties. Do any of you collect needle books?

Easter surprises in the mail

Are you ever astonished at the sheer number of tea vendors we have today? I am. And I was reminded of this when a new-to-me name in tea showed up in my mailbox last week: “Kittea.” My friend Nancy sent me a thoughtful Easter gift, and it included this Kittea Raspberry Oolong Tea, which very much reminded me of juicy raspberries.

Also included was this nice thick Alice in Wonderland bookmark, a leather-like design I’d not seen before.

I love the back too! Amidst all the political flyers that have already started clogging up my mailbox, this was a delightful and delicious package to find in the mail!