Christmas decor that's right At Home

Do you have an At Home store in your town? We got one a few years ago, but I don't recall ever buying anything there until last week, when I decided to stop by and check out the Christmas décor. And while there were loads of things I liked, I limited myself to just two items on that trip.

First, this teacup, a little larger than a real one, lights up, so I look forward to displaying it at Christmas.

And this 8 x 8-inch frosty piece is just a shelf-sitter, I suppose you'd say, but I am always delighted when I see Christmas décor that is teacup-shaped and not just mug-shaped. I'll decorate with both, but … teacups for the win!

A whimsical new tea infuser

The other day, my friend Deberah asked if I would be home because she had something she wanted to drop off for me. I was delighted to receive a bag of treats that included some of her homemade pumpkin muffins as well as a beautiful new tea tea infuser from her daughter, Amelia, who is also a friend! (Amelia the Friend is not to be confused with Amelia the Niece, although Amelia the Niece is also my friend, but you know what I mean.)

I rarely make tea the same way twice, so my brewing methods each week are likely to include tea bags, a tea infuser basket, a tea ball or spoon, a tea-filtering mug, and perhaps a paper filter tea bag if the loose tea has lots of small bits in it, like a rooibos tea. So I was quite happy to receive a new tea infuser.

Using such accoutrements helps me to slow down and truly savor my tea, and I used this infuser to make some of the herbal tea from Scotland that I received as a gift recently, tea I am absolutely hoarding. With gifted tea and a gifted tea infuser, this cup of tea was one to savor indeed! (Just curious: Do you make tea using one particular way, or do you switch it up?)

Amelia's Bridal Shower

I can't remember who it was, but years ago, some friend of mine suggested that we ought to hold showers for middle-aged women and replace all the goodies we got at our wedding showers. Isn't that a marvelous idea? I couldn't help thinking of that at niece Amelia's bridal shower on Saturday!

I especially loved the idea of giving someone a Merry Christmas welcome mat as a wedding gift, like the one my sister is displaying here. Amelia also got a pretty Christmas plaque for the outdoors and a beautiful Christmas wreath, and she went right home and hung them all up at the newly purchased home she and Korbin will share after their wedding next month. At 19, Amelia has long wanted to be a young bride, and she has owned her own very successful dog-breeding and dog-boarding business for several years. She recently completed an apprenticeship and is now an actual dog groomer, and this dog-crazy niece has made us all very proud.

Her dad pastors the church where the shower was held, and her older sisters hosted. I was asked to bring chicken salad sandwiches, pimiento cheese sandwiches, and cheese wafers, which were easy to make and transport. 

I like to use a cookie cutter to add cutouts to some of the sandwiches. That way, guests know at a glance that they're getting pimiento cheese. (I continue to use the Marilyn Miller Method of freezing the bread beforehand to make it easier to cut.)

They had a ton of food for guests to eat, and these appetizer foods are some of my favorites. In fact, I've wished for years that we could have fast-food restaurants that offered tea and scones as well as nibbles like these!

I was very happy to see the Milo's Tea and lemonade available, so I made my own Arnold Palmer to drink.

Amelia and her sisters, and soon all three will be married!

It was a fun day of watching Amelia get showered with love, and based on the photos I saw on her social media this weekend, she is putting her new gifts to good use as she prepares to set up housekeeping.

I'm so excited for this new chapter in the life of my precious niece!

"Everlasting Hope" for the crafty tea lover

I'm headed to a craft retreat soon, and when I was at Joann the other day, I found the perfect new resource to take along! It's this Everlasting Hope book of stickers and designs by Karla Dornacher. My tea friend Lani in Hawaii first introduced me to Karla's beautiful work years ago, so when I saw her name on this book, I had to take a peek inside. And what was one of the first things I saw?

This page with teacups and Bible verses. Count me in!

There are also some cute vellum designs that can be colored in and glued along the blank borders of those journaling Bibles that are so popular. I have one I've been coloring in for years, and I especially like the fact that Karla prefers to color "around" scriptures and not "on" them in her Bible.

The book even has cute stickers of borders and colorful tabs. I can't wait to use this with my crafty friends, and I think some of you would enjoy it too! Also, while this book is just $12.95 and is available on Amazon at the full price, I got it for 20 percent off at Joann, so be sure to comparison shop if you decide to get a copy!

 

Tea bags and travels

When I went to England for the first time, I remember being intrigued by all the different tea bags I came across in my hotel room and at breakfast. I was sure to try them all, and I even brought a few of the extras home with me. Well, I'm now in a small group at church with a friend who is a Delta flight attendant, and look what she brought me from one of her international trips the other week!

She's happily sharing her extra tea bags with me, and I was quite curious about what all she'd picked up while staying in hotels on her most recent trip. The first one I tried was one I'd never heard of before, Pure tea from Betjeman & Barton.

As I expected from the thick packaging, this was a "high-end" tea bag, and I must say the tea was very good. It was a brisk black tea, just as you'd expect in an "early morning" tea, and of course I was happy to have the others to try as well. I happened to mention them to one of my young tea-loving neighbors, who asked, "Can you share some of them with us?" And yes, I most definitely can. Do you bring home the freebie tea bags when you travel?

A tea celebrating Amelia and her bridesmaids!

My youngest niece, Amelia, gets married next month, and on Saturday, I hosted her Bridesmaids Tea at The Emerald Chandelier tearoom in Griffin, which has quickly become my go-to local tearoom. Amelia is a veteran of teatime, so it seemed only natural to have a tea for her and her bridesmaids!

Here's everyone (except me, the photographer) in front of the tearoom.

And here I am with the honoree!

Those of you who've been reading this blog for many years know that I have three nieces, including Amelia and her sisters Cari (aka Ezra's mom), shown here…

And Madison, who recently had her first child, baby Hoyt.

And three-week-old Hoyt was an angel at his first teatime, here in the arms of my sister, Rhonda!

The girls all seemed to enjoy themselves, and some of them even …

Tried on the hats!

As on my previous visits to this tearoom, I found the food plentiful and had to take some of the sweets home with me because I was so stuffed. I was so busy that I didn't write down notes about the tea as I usually do, but I can report that the favorite savories were the Creamy Chicken Wild Rice Soup and the bite-sized Pizza Buns, and the favorite sweet was the Apple Scone with Pecans and Caramel. It was a lovely day and definitely my favorite way to celebrate with some of my favorite girls!

Popeye's Apple Cranberry Tea

I never, ever go to Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen, the fast-food restaurant. I'm not opposed, mind you, but I tend to eat at home unless I'm meeting someone for lunch or dinner, and I don't want to get in the habit of picking up fast food, especially during the week. But one day this week, I decided some hot chicken fingers sounded really good, so I pulled into Popeye's and promptly saw a sign advertising their new Apple Cranberry Tea.

It came in only one size, so I ordered it, and it was … very sweet! I haven't been eating as many sweets these days, so I think perhaps that's why I found the drink so overly sugary. The taste was good, mind you, just a bit too much sugar for me. When I got home, I googled and learned I could've ordered the unsweet version, so I may zip by there again one day and try it unsweet.

And I changed my mind about the chicken fingers and went for the spicy fish sandwich instead. I liked it, but wow, it was so large that I could eat only half of it, and I ate the rest for dinner. And while I don't plan to visit drive-throughs any more frequently, I do think it's a good sign when flavored teas are becoming so mainstream!

A holiday heads-up

Yesterday, I ran by the local Joann store to check out the Christmas stuff, and I was so pleased to find some fun new goodies!

I'd almost ordered some Christmas teacup earrings I'd seen in a Facebook ad for just twenty dollars the other day, but I talked myself out of them, thinking I could probably find a better deal. These mug earrings were half off, just $5.99, so that was an easy yes.

Each one measures about 1-1/2 inches long and 1 inch wide, and I look forward to wearing them with the new Christmas outfit I don't yet have.

And yes, my obsession with Santa mugs continues, so I was delighted to find these miniature mugs with the Tim Holtz craft supplies. I love his products and am not sure I'll even use these for crafting, but for just $5.59 (on sale), these two tiny mugs needed to join my collection. I was walking down an aisle at the store when some woman looked at me and said, "I really need to stay out of this store." I laughed and thought, "Me, too, lady. Me too!"

Adventures in embossing cookies

A few years ago, a company got in touch with an offer to send me one of their embossed wooden rolling pins for embossing cookies, hoping I would review it here on the Tea With Friends blog. They sent one in a very pretty leaf design, but it just didn't emboss very well. I distinctly remember asking Alex if he could detect a design in that first batch of cookies I made with the rolling pin, and he squinted and nicely said not really, which was just as I thought. When I wrote a woman at the company to explain the problem, she suggested I try another of their recipes. I did, and still, the rolling pin didn't work well. She suggested I try a third recipe, and I told her as politely as I could that I didn't have time to waste a third batch of cookies on a product that simply didn't work. Plus, I wasn't going to tell all of you to buy a $40 rolling pin that didn't perform. And I've said all that to say this: I had some embossing success over the weekend!

Recently, I spotted this $1.99 Wilton rolling pin at T. J. Maxx. Was I willing to risk $1.99 on a gadget that might not work? Yes, actually, I was.

The rolling pin was clearly designed for use with fondant, but while fondant is beautiful to see, I'm not wild about the taste. So, I tried embossing cookies made with this recipe that I found online. (I added 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.) The cookies were great with my afternoon tea, and I'm freezing some of them to go on Christmas cookie plates for friends.

And best of all, I can see some designs. Have any of you embossed cookies before? I'd love to hear about your experience!

Trunk or Treat 2024

Last night was my church's annual Trunk or Treat event, and this year, we brought back Hot Dog Hill, an area where we serve free hot dog meals to trick-or-treaters and really anyone who wants to stop by. I was part of the team that helped assemble 1,400 hot dog meals in the afternoon. It was a fun time since we had a bunch of worker bees to make it happen!

Then the meals were loaded up on rolling carts, ferried upstairs by elevator, and delivered to the tables that had been set up outdoors. My church is a downtown church and gets a few thousand trick-or-treaters each year, so we knew to be prepared. The last time they did hot dogs, I hear that they did 1,200 and distributed them all. Last night, we gave out 1,400 and could have given out more. I think we're looking at a minimum of 1,500 next year. People seemed so grateful!

This year, I noted lots of cute policemen and firemen, like this adorable little guy.

And my Sunday school friends Dawn and Warren were there with their grandson, a Chick-fil-A cow. Isn't he cute?

We have lots of fun themed "trunks" for giving out candy, including this one featuring "Phil" and "Miss Kay" from Duck Dynasty.

But my favorite, you tea-loving friends will not be surprised to hear, was this one.

It was a fun evening that made a lot of little folks (and big ones too) quite happy!