Herbal teas and sweet dreams

While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads

This week's tea is extra sweet--as is my confections tree which is the inspiration for this tea.  This tree is set up in the breakfast nook area of my kitchen in my big picture window.  My kitchen has a sweets theme, down to the snowflake shaped candies hanging in the windows on either side of the tree.   

Candies, cookies, cupcakes, and other goodies cover the tree, with a large  star-like snowflake cookie serving as the tree topper.   Here are a few of my favorite ornaments:

(A gingerbread girl and boy in teacups!  Just perfect.)

Anyone for a cup of tea?   

My Christmas Sweets teapot matches Santa's candy cane striped coat and sleigh!  Today's teacup is the classic Christmas tree pattern by Spode. 

I have the perfect tea to serve in the Christmas Sweets teapot--Celestial Seasonings Gingerbread Spice!

 (See one of my stuffed Gingerbread men looking on?  He definitely approves!)

I have a hard time walking past stuffed gingerbread men (and women) during this time of year...they are so addicting!  I'll share a picture of some of the rest of my gingerbread decorations later this week. 

I thought spiced cookies would be a perfect match to a spiced tea.  These cookies are pebbernodders, with all sorts of spices mixed in.  I made these for a holiday party at work and I'll share the recipe later this week. 







Here is one more picture of the tree, before I say goodnight:

The children were nestled, all snug in their beds,

which sounds like a good idea to me!  Goodnight!

I'm joining these tea parties this week:

Tea Time Tuesday at Rose Chintz Cottage

Tea Cup Tuesday ~ http://www.marthasfavorites.com/
Tuesday Cuppa Tea~ http://www.antiquesandteacups.info/

Bernideen's Friends Sharing Tea

Having tea in Dicken's Village

The next (and last bit) of my tea related décor is, appropriately enough, on my tea cart.

There is also a Christmas teapot that goes on the trivet on the cart, but I will save that for another day. 

I have two Christmas tea houses, the Canton tea house (I love the Asian inspired portico complete with handing lanterns on the English cottage!):

 

and the English tea room:

 

 

The patroness of the English tea room also has a portable cart so she can take tea out about the town.  If you look really closely, written on the side of the cart says "You are cordially invited to attend a Tea in the Afternoon in the custom of Anna, 7th Duchess of Bedford."  Such great little touches!  



Santa enjoys a good cuppa

The next tea related decoration I will share is also in my foyer/dining room area.

 

 

 

This Santa enjoys music (he has a music box, by the way) and cups of hot tea.  Here is a closer look at his teapot:

 

 

Mistletoe!  This is a Portmeirion teapot ornament, and was a perfect size to go with Santa.

 

Let's take a step back, so you can see where Santa is:

 

 

Santa is underneath my hall console, which is the first thing a guest sees when they enter my house.  Santa offering tea is a perfect greeter!  Here is a better look at the top of the table as well, which has my nativity scene and one of my Christmas music boxes.

 

 





Carrie's Tea Room and a visit to Christmas Town

As I mentioned earlier this week, I have a couple of places where "tea" themed decorations have crept in.  One of those places is in my Christmas Village.

My mom bought this village for me at Dollar Tree, oh, probably ten years ago when I was still in college.  I love Christmas decorations and I was really excited to get this little village.  I displayed it under a Christmas bush (a small Christmas tree that was more squat than tree-like, thus the bush moniker) on the kitchen table in my apartment, after I propped the bush up with a box, of course.  The village also traveled with me to law school, where it was placed in the large windowsill in my apartment.  Now I get to enjoy it in my newest home...and share it with you!   

Here is our next stop, Christmas town, via the Virginia Railway.  The Hotel is right next to the station, if you would like to drop off your overnight bag first? 

Santa is already in town, and some locals are putting the finishing touches on the decorations before tonight's big tree lighting!

On the other side of the fire station is Carrie's Tea Rooms, my little piece of tea heaven. Tea parties are every Monday, but you can stop by for a cup of tea and a snack any day of the week!   

Oh, look out for the horse and carriage!  The town is giving out free rides at tonight's party.

There is a little ice rink on the lawn in front of the church if you want to go and watch the skaters, or we could even try it out ourselves.  I have never mastered it, but I can give it another try!  The Christmas tree is right by the rink, ready for everyone in town to bring an ornament to decorate it. 

Before I sign off for the night, let's take a quick step back.  Here is a picture of the entire alcove in my front entry/dining room:

This china cabinet belonged to my grandmother.  I have been using it to store my music box collection since I was a child.  At one point it even had my first set of dishes, but now I have more music boxes to display, so they have taken over. 

December 1st and a Tea Tree

This week I thought I would share some of the tea related Christmas decorations that I have put up.  My house is a mess still because I haven't quite put everything back yet, but pretty much everything is up and done--except for the kitchen, I'm still working out some kinks.

This entire month my weekly tea party will feature a different tree in my house--I'm one of those crazy people who does multiple trees in different themes...so on to the first one!

This year I moved my Tea Tree to a different location where it is more noticeable, and added a few new goodies.

 

I figured we could start at the top with my doctored angel.

 

 

I bought a small angel ornament at Michaels and removed the ribbon and other things that were in her hands and replaced it with a miniature teacup.  I just used a glue dot to attach it, and ta-dah!

 





I have only been collecting tea ornaments for a couple of years and last year was the first time I had enough to put them all on a themed tree.  Some of the teacups and teapots are from places I've visited:

(the teapot in the middle top has a picture of the  Biltmore in Asheville, NC  and the teacup almost directly under that is from Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, SC)

 

(The teapot and teacup above are of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington in Alexandria, Virginia)

 

 

Some ornaments have writing:

 (Christmas is a magical time of year!)

 

others are miniatures of famous patterns.

 

 

One was a gift from a tea guest, she saw the ornament and bought it for me because she had such a good time at a Christmas tea she attended the year before.

 



 



I also have a couple with international flair with Irish shamrocks and Dutch Delft:

 

 



Most of the ornaments are teacups or teapots, but I have found a couple of "different" things, including the gold teaspoon in the bottom of the picture above with a teapot handle,

a creamer and sugar,

 

(I would love to have this chintz set in real life!  If you look in the bottom left of the picture you can see a tea cup with two bears on the saucer--they are having tea themselves, complete with a tiny teapot!)

 

a teapot tea strainer,

 

and a cross stitch ornament I made myself.

 

 

 

Thanks for starting your December with me!  I'm joining these tea parties this week:

 

Tea Time Tuesday at Rose Chintz Cottage

Tea Cup Tuesday ~ http://www.marthasfavorites.com/
Tuesday Cuppa Tea~ http://www.antiquesandteacups.info/

Bernideen's Friends Sharing Tea

 

 

One last fall post...cookies!

Tomorrow is the first day of December, which is the official start of Christmas on my blog!  I'm really excited to share my decorations with you, but first I thought we could take a snack break.

These are pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  I took them to work for a bake sale for charity.  I've done a couple of other recipes, but this one has worked the best for me.

 

 

I just used the recipe I found on Allrecipes here.  I did everything the same, except I used a mix of Ghirardelli milk chocolate and dark chocolate chips.  These cookies are moist and somewhat cakelike.  They also definitely taste like pumpkin. 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving! (tea cart)

Well, this week has flown by!  I finished up my part of the cooking and had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast today with my family.  I wanted to take a quick minute to share my tea party for this week...which is Thanksgiving themed :).

I went gold, with pumpkins and turkeys.

 

Thanksgiving

for each new morning,

with its light

for rest and shelter of the night

for health and food

for love and friends

For Everything

thy goodness sends.

 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving!