Tea Tray

My older sister sent via Santa a lovely little tea tray, perfect for nibbles and tea for one. It'll be kept on the sideboard, ever ready to provide a little comforting sustenance in 2011.

Santa Brings Tea Stuff

We must have been good in the parlor this year, as Santa brought us a couple of delightful tea-related items.

This is a lovely, deep cobalt blue, single serving tea pot from one of my sisters. The color is much darker than the photo (my apologies for the glare). It came with Stash chocolate mint oolong tea, which we tried Christmas afternoon. The mint is very strong, and I couldn't detect any hint of chocolate, but it made a nice change from our preference for strong black tea. The parlor's new year's resolution may be to branch out in our tea sampling.

Christmas Morning Breakfast

Christmas morning here in the parlor (as well as Christmas Eve morning), we served bagels, cream cheese, and lox for breakfast, accompanied on Christmas morn by leftover deviled eggs. Stash Christmas Morning tea was the tea accompanying the food, of course, a nice, rich but delicate blend of Assam, Ceylon, Keemun, Sumatra, and Jasmine teas.

Wigilia Dessert and Tea

Wigilia, the traditional Polish Christmas Eve celebration, included a delicious blueberry bread pudding which was served with Twinings Christmas Tea.

Twinings Christmas Tea

This week we were serving chocolate covered cheesecake bites in the parlor, made for our office Christmas party. As you can imagine, few made it back to the parlor.

To go along with the cheesecake, we selected Twinings Christmas Tea. It's a blended black tea mixed with cinnamon and cloves. A little milk and a touch of sweetener made this slightly spicy tea an excellent companion to the chocolatey goodness.

My Beehive Cosy

Made for thepunkrockinchick for the tea cosy swap at Crochetville. My first design--a bee skep. I used 1.5 skeins of Lion Brand WoolEase in Gold (171), with some metal bee buttons. It's hard to see, but I tried plain stitching to mimic the small opening; not too successfully as it's too indefinite. But I am really happy with how it came out.