Vera Bradley Tea Garden accessories

If you'll humor me with just a few more birthday gift postings, I promise I'll cut out the self-centeredness! But when I get such cool gifts from so many friends and family members, I want to share just in case some of you want to add these items to your wist list too.

And a "Wish List" is exactly how I got this Vera Bradley Tea Garden case for my iPad! The DH asked for a recommendation of what I wanted for my birthday, so I sent him an Amazon link to this case. It's such a cheerful new floral pattern, and of course I *love* that the pattern's name is Tea Garden!

And with no hint from me whatsoever, and not even aware of what this pattern was called, my sister got me this Tea Garden key chain and the matching lanyard. I love these!

Another reason I wanted to mention the iPad is that recently I was asked about recommendations for tea-related apps, since I had blogged about using some of them in the past. I looked on my iPod touch, where I had originally downloaded some tea apps, but I see I eventually got rid of them all! It seems I'm not using a whole lot of new apps of any kind anymore—on the iPod touch or the iPad—except the occasional game of Angry Birds, of course. And I've had my iPad for more than a year, but only last week did I begin reading my first eBook. What I *do* use my iPad for, all the time, is looking up recipes! I find it so much easier to look up a recipe and save it to my iPad. I often do a "screen grab" of the recipe so it's right there in my photos and I don't even have to go back and look it up. (If you're not a tech person, that basically means I'm taking an on-screen photo of the web page.) The background photo for my iPad, I just realized, also has a tea connection in that it's my beloved David Austin 'Tea Clipper' rose. Any of you want to suggest some apps? Are there any tea-ish ways you use technology? Please share!