Tea for Two

On Wednesday we checked out of our apartment in Oxford and took a taxi to Woodstock to check into our hotel for Wednesday and Thursday night. For curious minds the taxi was about 30 bucks. We could have taken a bus except with our luggage that would have been too taxing on us. We checked our luggage at the hotel and took a walk about the town. We had a nice lunch with a very jovial host at The King’s Arms where we met another U.S. family enjoying Woodstock. Later in the afternoon after getting the key to our room we had our first Afternoon Tea on at The Feathers Hotel in Woodstock. It’s interesting when our lodgings want you to check out by 10am and then your next lodging won’t want you to check in till 4PM. The hotel did let us check into our room at 2 instead of 4 since our room was ready. Our tea reservation was at 4:30. Afterwards we had a nice walk to the outskirts of town to catch a glimpse of Blenheim Palace.

Goodnight from Woodstock!

Tough Times for Tea Rooms…

On the letter T for the A to Z Challenge and I’m choosing Tea Rooms and Tea. I hope all the Tea Rooms in Great Britain survive the COVID-19 shut down! All these photos are from our trip to England in July of 2014.

Although we passed quite a few tea rooms while we were in England I only had tea once and it wasn’t in a tea room. Oye. I will show you many lovely tea rooms that you can choose from if you travel to England. Lucy’s was in Stow on the Wold.

This one was in Broadway in the Cotswolds.

Our daily timing was way off for stopping to enjoy a cup of tea in the afternoon. By then we were usually a bit warm and needed something cooler to drink.

Love the name of this one, Mrs. T. Potts…pretty clever. It was real close to Martha’s coffee house on the main street running through Moreton in Marsh.

On our way to Banbury we saw Mrs. Brown’s Tea room.

In Bourton on the Water there were a few tea rooms to choose from.

This restaurant/tearoom was less appealing than the Small Talk Tearoom above.

If we didn’t manage to walk right past a tearoom we enjoyed seeing signs for tearooms.

We got a little closer to a proper tea experience with these delicious scones and clotted cream but the drink of choice on this morning was coffee in Hay on Wye.

On one of our last days in England I decided it was high time to have some tea so as not to totally disappoint my tea drinking readers.

It wasn’t the finest of tea services in the bar of our hotel. The scones were no where near as nice as the ones we had in Hay on Wye.

This was my tea and tea experience. One hot and the other one cold. The cold one may or may not have had some alcohol in it.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post I hope that the many tea rooms in Great Britain will survive the COVID-19 lock down. We are hoping that things will look good enough come September for us to keep our flight and apartment reservations for Oxford, England. We wait and we’ll see.

What is your favorite tea? Do you have a favorite Tea Room? Have you ever attempted to host a proper Tea?

A Tea Break…

We chose Attic Secrets in Marysville for our tea on the Saturday after Thanksgiving since we planned to shop at the Navy Exchange Complex afterwards.

My sister Lana, Sister-in-law Letty, Me, DIL Laura and daughter Katie.

We each chose our teacups and brought them to our table and selected our tea.

We were so pleased to see a gluten free tea choice for Letty on the menu, too.

After our lovely leisurely tea we headed to the Navy Exchange to do a little tax free shopping. We made a couple more stops to Cost Plus, Hobby Lobby, and a grocery store before heading back to Josh and Laura’s to see what the guys accomplished. Besides their construction project Josh managed to make a great pot of chili and a pan of gluten free cornbread for us all to enjoy. Here are the construction project collages!

A useless door in Josh and Laura’s family room that was a drafty nuisance! Out with the door.

In with new framing, plywood, and insulation.

New tar paper on the exterior and matching siding.

New drywall and mud on the inside waiting for a few more coats and then sanding before a paint job and added baseboard. These workers are done with their job for the day!

We enjoyed the great chili and cornbread and pomegranate margaritas. Some of us headed home while another group stayed and played some rip roaring table games.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site. All my photos that I stored and uploaded from that site are now big ugly black and grey boxes with a message to pay big bucks to get them restored to my blog. It will take me a long time to restore thousands of posts.

All Aboard!

Judy and I decided to pull together a trip to the Seattle area for the Mennonite Girls Can Cook who live in British Columbia. Judy came up with a plan for the 7 B.C. girls to drive to Bellingham, Washington and hop on Amtrak south. It’s hard to corral that many girls and come up with a good date for everyone but we finally did and Wednesday June 25th would be the day. When the day was finally here one of the 7 had to stay home. Life happens…

I made a sign so they couldn’t miss their tour guide and limousine driver for the day. The car the rental agency gave me seemed as big as a limousine. This photo that Bev took catches the big white ~~limousine~~ SUV in the background. Thanks Bev for the photos I’m stealing from you for this post.

Our first stop was the Queen Mary Tea Room near the University of Washington.

We each had a different china pattern on our tea cups.

The food was delicious and presented nicely. We finished up at the tea room and after checking out the Tea Emporium we drove to our 2nd stop of the day, University Village.

“University Village is an open-air lifestyle shopping center which offers a unique formula of locally-owned boutiques and signature national retailers. U Village is a regional destination for home furnishings, popular fashions and unique gift items with a distinct collection of restaurants and eateries.”

We all enjoyed the beautiful flowers that were blooming in hanging planters and large planters throughout the center. We gave ourselves a time limit and we managed not to lose anyone while we were here.

Next stop before our dinner reservations would be my humble home. A couple of the girls had been to my house before but it was new to the rest.

It was fun to have everyone in my home for a quick refreshment and tour.

We stole Dear away from his bathroom renovation work to take a photo of all of us together on our deck steps.

We made dinner reservations at the Beach Cafe on the Edmonds waterfront which was just a hop skip and jump away from the railway station. The girls wouldn’t want to miss the train.

Several of us chose the different fish tacos for our meal while others had shrimp and scampi dishes. We shared a couple desserts just to top everything off with. By this time in our day we were rather beat and forgot to take some photos of our dishes and desserts.

On to the station and our goodbye hugs.

A lovely day from beginning to end.

I’m already making plans for an Island getaway for the next MGCC girls day out.

Here’s our day through Anneliese’s lens.

Tonight Dear and I are meeting up with Josh and Laura to celebrate a late Mother’s Day/Father’s Day meal together. We will also celebrate the U.S.A. advancing to the round of 16 with our 2nd place finish in group G.

Celebrating Katie!

Today is Katie’s birthday and we have a full day of festivities planned. Our day is starting with breakfast at the Queen Mary Tea Room in Seattle.

From the the Queen Mary Tea Room we plan on heading to Seattle Center to see the Chihuly Glass and Garden Exhibit. Sounds like we are getting a lot of rain for Katie’s birthday so time will tell if we will walk through the garden. We might just be able to take in the indoor exhibits. I hope to have photos to share next week. After the Chihuly Glass Museum we have a booking for massages and a sugar foot scrub. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Massage Envy happens to be in the same little center that Padria Mediterranean Cafe is in and we’ll pick up take away for dinner. Dear, Katie and I will be joined by Josh, Laura, my sister Lana and her husband Steve, our nephew Caleb with his new bride, Marie. I haven’t thought about a cake…too bad there isn’t a bakery in the same center. Maybe the Queen Mary will have something nice to take away that can stand in as a cake…thank you for listening while I think out loud!

Since we’ll be gone most of the day there really is no time to prepare for company. My house is still kind of messy from the Christmas festivities so it’s nice to be having family in who probably don’t care about the state of things. At least I’ve convinced myself no one will care…

This next photo was from Katie’s birthday just one year ago…

Happy Birthday Dear Katie!

Hope all is well these last few days of 2013 in your world. Hard to believe we’ll have to be training our fingers to grip that pen and write 2014 instead of 2013 so soon!

Escaping the Chaos…

…viewing images of destinations we are headed to during our trip to England in September.

Lacock Village, Old Trafford Stadium, The Cotswolds, Lacock Abbey, Wells Cathedral, Porthowan Cornwall, St. Michael’s Mount Cornwall, London.

Of course we will see more along the way to these great destinations.

All is good at this old house in the midst of the chaos. Dear had a minor injury during the work over the weekend so he’s taking the next couple days off to recuperate which means happily for me he’ll be here to supervise the work as the new floors go in on Tuesday. Josh and Laura rescued us and especially Dear bringing food and helping put the new patio door in. I washed all the window inside and out in the family room and washed the mini blinds. Now I really understand people having them professionally cleaned. What a job!

On Saturday I had another escape to a fun tea sponsored by a Girl Scout friend’s troop to raise money. She and her troop did a wonderful job of serving all of us and also making conversation as we sipped our tea. The 3 girls who were on the Tea Committee earned their Social Butterfly badges. How cute is that!

Here’s my DIL Laura with our little friend Sarah. Sarah was on the Tea Committee so she earned her badge. Sarah’s older sister Anna is in the top right photo. This last photo is of the views from the home where the tea was held. Such a beautiful day in the Puget Sound area of Washington.

I zoomed in on the Ferry doing the Edmonds/Kingston voyage.

Hope you all had a nice weekend.

FFF ~ A Year Ago…

Thank you Susanne for hosting this weekly event! Click over to Living to Tell the Story to join in.

What a difference a year makes. The photos in my collage are from last October while we were still living in Southern California. An early morning walk at Emma Wood Beach with Dear. A walk at the Blueberry fields with Willow. Tea with Willow in Camarillo while she knits and Tea with my family in Fullerton when Avery was just a wee little baby. Good memories. If you are a knitter there’s an opportunity for you to donate some of your work for a great cause. Click over to Willow’s Cottage for the details. But hurry there’s a deadline.

Now for my favorites from this past week.

1. Monday’s Announcement about the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Cookbook coming out next Spring! We had to keep it under wraps for a long time and it was fun to finally have a press release and to be able to speak about it!

2. Tuesday night Josh, Laura and I attended an international friendly soccer game at Qwest field between Seattle Sounders F.C. and Chivas de Guadalajara a premier team from Mexico. There were so many Chivas fans there and it’s the first time I’ve been at a Sounders game where the opposing team cheered even louder then us. A very exciting game with music and announcements in Spanish. We were horrible hosts, though, because we whooped them 3 to 1.

3. Making an appointment for Katie’s first wedding dress shopping this Saturday. Katie, Laura, my sister Lana, Katie’s Maid of Honor Jamie and I are all going along for the fun. When I called to make the appointment the sweet gal said “Don’t forget to bring your camera”. Now that was music to my ears!

4. I over stressed the muscles in my right arm over the last month and have had a lot of pain and haven’t been able to do the simplest things with my right hand because of it. I asked for prayer at Bible Study and one of the gals there decided I needed to go see her muscle guy at an Athletic Institute and got on her phone right then and there and made me an appointment. This guy worked on my muscles from my back, shoulder, upper arm, etc. etc. and the results are amazing. I’ll be going back because the results are worth it. I don’t even know how much it cost because this gal took care of the fee for me. That was over the top generous of her!

5. Participating in a Bible study on the Book of Philippians has been really good. The main theme of the book is JOY in all circumstances because Christ is with us and because we can have the attitude that He had. That really is the key to everyday life and I like focusing on that every week.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.

We Met in Abbotsford…

The Mennonite Girls Can Cook came together for the first time at the Abbotsford Airport in British Columbia with quite a splash. These gals added a little color and extra historical meaning to our get together. Oh the fun and laughter these two generated.

It took me 2 hours to drive to Lovella’s house with an easy border crossing. Lovella, Anneliese and I drove to Abbotsford Airport together to meet the other girls and wait for Betty and Charlotte to arrive from Manitoba.

From the airport the ten of us headed to Lovella’s for High Tea.

She put on a beautiful spread for us and we had a great time getting acquainted.

On our way off to visit our farm store advertisers we received these great business cards for MGCC from Lovella.

Lovella’s High Tea set the stage for 3 wonderful days of eating, laughing and praying together.

A St. Patrick’s Day Birthday!

Happy Birthday Willow!

Hope you have time for some tea and

knitting!

Willow is the only person I know who has a birthday on St. Patrick’s Day (I think). May God bless you richly my friend.

Willow’s Cottage

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Hot Tea Month ~ Favorite Teas

This is week two of Hot Tea Month blog-a-thon. Click on over to the hot tea month site to join in the fun. A big thank you to Scrabblequeen for hosting the event!

Week Two: January 10th-16th

Tell us about your favorite teas. Do you prefer black, green, white, red, or “herbal”? Do you like added flavors such as fruit, flowers, vanilla, chocolate, or spices, or are you a “purist”?

For a quick cup of tea I generally enjoy tea steeped with a tea bag. If I am going to steep loose tea I enjoy a good Earl Grey or English Breakfast Tea or a Russian black tea called Czars tea.

I always have to make sure I have good ole Lipton tea bags around for my family especially my brother Leonard. Some of my sisters have moved on to herbal teas. When I was younger I put lots of sugar and milk in my tea. These days I drink most of my hot beverages black with no sweeteners.

I found this really good tea in these cool muslin bags at a local grocery store at a close-out price. A Russian blend of China, Ceylon, and India teas with natural scents of bergamot, lemon, lime, orange, mandarin and flowers. What a description :0)

This is my daughter in a flat we rented in Scotland enjoying our welcome tea tray that was left for us.

I very rarely go for more fruity teas but I do experiment once in a while. This tea cup and tea was a gift from my son and his wife and I’ve enjoyed the variety of teas from this box.

If I want something hot at night I generally will go for the herbals. My first choice is usually Chamomile.

When we go out for tea in a larger group we will usually get a pot of Earl Grey, a pot of some fruity tea like Peach, and choose something different like lavender or anything we haven’t tried before that is different from our usual. It’s fun to experiment with the group.

I’ve developed a nagging cough that hopefully will depart in the next day or two in the meantime as I write this post I’m enjoying a hot cuppa Lady Grey to soothe my throat. It’s interesting that if I’m ever sick I always think of hot tea not hot coffee. Of course if things get really bad there’s that other British remedy…

Have a good week enjoying your tea, whatever flavor or variety you choose!

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Tag Archives: Tea