Readying for the red, white, and blue

It was time to switch that red-white-and-blue plastic tablecloth I’ve had on my table for a few weeks and set up the nicer fabric one, which I may leave out all summer. I found a few new goodies at a local antique mall on Saturday, so I was inspired to work on my table scape for the next time my young neighbors come over for tea.

This ruffled basket I found looks so 1980s to me, but the ’80s are having a moment, it seems, and I do love ruffles…

So I decided this would be good for holding things like straws and the red-white-and-blue paper napkins I keep forgetting to buy.

I think I’ve collected about a half-dozen vintage patriotic plates, but this latest one’s blue trim made the center design stand out.

The tablecloth is one I found back in February while visiting Monroe. I’d really like for every decoration I own to have flowers on it if possible. And apparently, even for the Fourth of July, it’s possible.

This clear oval Bicentennial plate is one I bought in the mountains last fall, and it will be perfect for holding the three little boxes of raisins that I always give my young friends as their teatime treat.

And the blue floral plates aren’t quite the right color of blue and needed a little softening, so with a cream-colored dessert plate on top and miscellaneous blue teacups alongside, I think they’ll work just fine. (The only other time I used these blue plates was for a breakfast tea to celebrate the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, so it’s been a while!) I do enjoy decorating a themed table, especially when much of the décor consists of things I've already collected.

Peach Mango Refreshers from Twinings

It's always fun to discover a new type of tea from Twinings, and these "Refreshers" caught my eye at the grocery store this week.

They were a little pricier than regular tea bags—$6.99 for a box of just five packets, about the size of cocoa packets—but I had to try them. Peach Mango sounded like a fun flavor, and Twinings is a brand of tea I've always enjoyed.

Until now. I am sorry to say that this tea was a big disappointment. I made it with twelve ounces of cold water as directed, but the result was a weak beverage that tasted like it came from a watered-down version of flavored-water packets I sometimes buy. Also, the peach bits remained hard and didn't much taste like peaches. When I transferred this tea to a stainless steel tumbler later on, the bits were always an unpleasant surprise coming through the straw. Also: This tea had a weird aftertaste. Coming in at a decent 60 calories per serving, the drink ingredients include "Cane Sugar, Citric Acid, Dried Peach Pieces [Ascorbic Acid & Citric Acid to Protect Colour], Natural Peach and Mango Flavours with other Natural Flavours, Natural Flavour, Honeybush Extract, Xanthan Gum." Is honeybush the only "herbal tea" in this drink? No matter. I wouldn't buy these again, and I'm predicting they won't be on the shelves for long. It's clearly time for me to go make a pitcher of real tea!

A delicious new snack cake

I love-love-love to bake cakes, but now that it’s just me, I pretty much need to have an “occasion” to bake a cake so that I don’t either a) gobble the whole thing or b) let it go stale before I can finish it. So major holidays, family birthdays, the occasional church event … those are cake-baking occasions. But then I saw a recipe in Our State magazine that, once again, I had to try, and it was the one-layer Banana Mayonnaise Snack Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting.

My friend Susan B. in North Carolina gave me a subscription to Our State last Christmas, and I am so enjoying their wonderful features and photography and recipes.

This photo of the cake had me drooling, and I was very happy when mine turned out just perfect and even looked like the magazine photo. As the article points out, since the main ingredients in mayonnaise are oil and eggs, it rather makes sense that mayonnaise makes a great cake ingredient. The cake reminds me of banana bread but with a much lighter texture, and that peanut butter frosting? Boy, is it good. And you don’t have to be a magazine subscriber to get the recipe, as it’s online here. Let me know if you make it and love it as much as I do!

Some birthday month wrap-up treats

Last week, some girlfriends and I met for lunch at our local Chicken Salad Chick, and to my surprise, I received some lovely birthday gifts, including a new tea-themed puzzle and a new tea I'd never heard of!

This darling puzzle, a gift from my friend Beth, is titled Potted Teapots, and it is so pretty. I have been slowly cleaning out a spare bedroom that I want to decorate with a Blue Willow theme, and look what's in the bottom-left corner of this puzzle—a Blue Willow teapot. I love using puzzles as artwork and think this would be nice to give a pop of color to the room, and since this puzzle has just 500 pieces, maybe I can actually finish this one.

My friend Paige came bearing what looked like a wine bottle carrier, which sort of threw me, but inside was a thermos of hot water so that we could all try the tea that she had discovered, this Butterfly Boba, a green tea with butterfly pea flower and pineapple! This is from Pinky Up, whose loose tea I've tried before, but I'd sure never heard of their tea bags with tapioca pearls in them.

This tea, tinted blue from the butterfly pea flower, had a natural sweetness to it that I just loved, and of course anything with pineapple in it gets bonus points. It was so fun getting together with the girls, and to enjoy an impromptu tea tasting as well was simply delightful!

A gadget that was a nice idea, but …

So I'd been waiting till I had a free afternoon to try the new ice cube trays I got at Target last weekend. I'm drinking lots of iced tea now that it's gotten so warm, and I loved the idea of having cute little flower-shaped ice cubes in my glass. I wasn't sure what the flip top on the lid was for. To release the ice cubes, I guess?

The set of two trays was just $6.99, so why not give it a whirl, I thought.

Each cavity looked plenty deep to fill with water.

Well, first, it took me a while (and almost cost me a fingernail) to pry that lid off and fill the thing. I suppose I could have just filled it by opening that flip top, but nothing *said* to do that, and besides, I wanted to fill it where I could see that the right amount of water was inside, not overflowing and making an ugly ice cube (like a cookie that spreads during baking and loses its shape). And once the water froze, I must tell you that getting these suckers out was hard! I couldn't pry the lid off, and I finally just punched a few of the silicone wells from the back side, stretching the thing like a balloon until I finally popped the lid. I filled a glass with the ice cubes, and … Well, I wasn't impressed.

I added some blackberry tea I'd cold-brewed in the fridge, thinking that might make the ice cubes show up better, but no, they didn't. This was a nice idea, but maybe I'll make some sort of craft project with these molds instead!

Road Trip Tea Review: Sprite + Tea

It’s time for my annual Road Trip Tea Reviews, my critiques of those questionable bottled teas that I try each summer so that you don’t have to! Saturday, I stopped for gas at a local convenience store, and since I would be gone a while and hadn’t paused for lunch, I went inside the store for a snack. Here’s what caught my eye, not-so-attractively styled in the front seat of my car.

Some of you may remember that trend a few years ago of getting a bottle of Sprite and steeping a tea bag inside of it. The result was just so-so, Sprite being way too sugary a drink for me these days, but I was curious when I saw this ready-to-drink version and had to give this new variety of Sprite a try. And it tasted like … sugary Sprite with some tea in it. (You know how they say that the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.)

And that snack cake? I am ashamed to admit that I paid nearly three dollars for this thing. Have you ever been cleaning out the pantry when you found that, wedged in between the beans you never cooked and that flavored oil you never used, you came across a wayward Hostess snack cake from the late nineties? Well, that would *still* have tasted fresher than this cake, which lured me in with the words “Hershey’s” and “Limited edition.” Couldn’t finish the drink or the cake. And before I went home for the day, I headed to the store and got a nice big bag of Pink Lady apples so that I won’t be tempted by “snacks” like these the next time I’m out and about!

A tidbit tray for your July 4th display

I'm not usually a Target shopper, two Walmarts being closer to my house, but on Saturday, I happened to be near a Target and decided to run in for a few things. You know, creamer, a bottle of glue, and some shampoo. Ah, but it never ends there, does it? And so it was that I found myself drawn like a fly to honey to those five-dollar bins, where I spotted a mini red-and-blue tiered tray.

Actually, that was the end result. It comes like this, about the size of a saucer and a dessert plate.

Since I'd put these things together myself plenty of times, the DIY angle didn't bother me. And in under three minutes (I clocked it), mine was assembled. Now I'm thinking I should have gotten two!

And because I wasn't in a cooking mood that day, I was also drawn to these red-white-and-blue Chips Ahoy cookies. Festive, huh? I'm so looking forward to celebrating our nation's 250th birthday next month, and as I streamed the excellent new movie "A Great Awakening" last weekend, I was reminded again about the promise of America and the wisdom of our founders. I highly recommend watching it if you enjoy US history without the present-day politics!

Tea Central's Pineapple Green Tea

One of my favorite teatime discoveries of recent years is cold-brew teas, and I picked up a new one at T. J. Maxx the other day.

From Tea Central, this Pineapple Green Tea sounded like just the thing on a warm (almost) summer day. And at just $3.99 for the box, it's actually more economical than some of the teas I spotted at the grocery store recently.

I plopped a tea bag into a glass of water, let it sit in the fridge (much longer than the five minutes suggested, as I got distracted with house chores), and when I stopped for a break, voila, a lovely tea was waiting for me! You can definitely taste the pineapple in this tea, and it had no grassy taste from the green tea, making this one a real winner in my book!

A thrifty find from across the pond (found on an island in Georgia)

It is always so satisfying to find something I'd longed for at a thrift store. From the time I first visited Fortnum & Mason in London many years ago, I have longed for one of their fancy hampers, but I have not longed to spend the pennies necessary to fill said hamper and ship it across the pond. So, the hamper remained a not-very-likely bucket-list item. But then I visited the new Goodwill Boutique on St. Simons Island last month and found this mint-condition F&M Huntsman Hamper for just $7.99. I was thrilled! The basket even has leather latches and appears to be well-made.

It's going to serve as my picnic hamper this summer, so I picked up an iced tea dispenser at an antique mall over the weekend (although I'm pretty sure the piece is brand-new), as well as this large flour sack tea towel with teacups and teapots on it, which I will use as a tablecloth.

These pieces are definitely intended for picnicking, but they may end up in some vignette around the Fourth of July too. I am still just beside myself that I now own an F&M hamper, and it makes me happy every time I look at it!

Memorial Day 2026

All gave some, some gave all …

On this Memorial Day, I'm remembering those who gave the ultimate sacrifice!

 

Tea parties, picnics, and a plastic tablecloth

Several years ago, I bought this thick plastic tablecloth at a thrift store, I think for fifty cents, but I had never even unfolded it. I decided this might be good to use with my little neighbors when we’re crafting, but once I got it on the table for their snacks, I kind of liked its retro look.

And I was tickled to discover that the tablecloth is reversible, with red, white, and blue stripes on the other side. A flip of the cloth and I’ll move from Memorial Day to the Fourth of July.

I’m aiming to stock a picnic hamper I recently thrifted (more on that next week!), and it occurred to me that I might as well look for red, white, and blue dishes. Then I realized I had some, these vintage enamelware plates I found (new with stickers still on them!) at a thrift store last year. I wanted to try my trusty old Brown Sugar Shortbread recipe with King Arthur's gluten-free flour. It was a little more prone to breakage when I tried to remove the cookies before they'd cooled, but the taste was great and very light. I will happily serve these to my gluten-free-eating friends.

And then I remembered an enamelware teapot that my late friend Ruth gave me years ago. It’s missing some of the enamel in spots, and I’m thinking of crocheting some stars and simply gluing them on. Any other ideas? I enjoy assembling a casual collection of goodies like this, and I’m thinking I’ll treat my young friends to a teatime picnic one day this summer.

A spoonful of sugar makes the history go down …

Unless you were extra observant, you might not have noticed the teaspoons in the Wedgwood cream pitcher I shared a photo of on Monday, but these were some fun finds that I wanted to tell you about!

I was in a local antique mall the first of the year and was plundering through a pile of vintage silver plate items when I noticed teaspoons with some men's faces on them. After whipping out my reading glasses, I discovered that they were Wm. Rogers Mfg. Co. spoons depicting some of our former presidents, and I came home with five of them—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, William Harrison, and James Buchanan.

Most of them were $3, but George and Thomas were $6. I couldn't really quibble with those prices, though.

Even the bowls of the spoons are interesting, depicting famous sites like Mount Vernon. I'm planning to use these around the Fourth of July each year, so I'm very happy with my fun finds!

Getting ready for America's 250th birthday

Aware that the 250th birthday of our nation was coming up, I started buying a few vintage patriotic items a few years ago, and over the weekend, I started pulling them out. My favorite piece, by far, was this unmarked vintage teapot I found on eBay. I had seen one just like it for over $100, but the rattan handle was in pretty bad shape. This one was in perfect condition and was just $25, so that fit my budget.

Somewhere in this house are some reproduction Fourth of July postcards, but right now, only the Lord knows where they are. So I just filled this old secretary with as much red, white, and blue stuff as I could gather on Saturday, and it needs some finessing but is starting to come together.

Another favorite piece is this old pitcher displaying images of the presidents through Lyndon Johnson. This piece is marked 1965 and Made in Japan. If memory serves, I found it at an antique mall for just $6.

And this is a patriotic teacup with a vintage red, white, and blue hankie in the handle.

Since I still aspire to master the art of making fancy sugar cookies, I nabbed this box of vintage cookie cutters when I came across them in a local shop a few years ago. I also have newer ones that include elephant- and donkey-shaped cookie cutters.

Our country has lots of challenges these days, and I'm constantly praying for God to please give us godly leaders (from Washington on down to the local level) so that we can live in a way that will be blessed. The Georgia primary is tomorrow, and we'll be choosing the candidates who will run for governor in November's election, so it's an important one. (Actually, I think all elections are important!) I voted early, and I'll be eagerly awaiting the returns on Tuesday. Have any of you voted in a primary yet?