Tuesday Cuppa Tea - Are You Ready For December?

Because I'm not sure I am...Lol!  With our trying a new medication for my husband, our last 2 weeks have been tentative at best...he wasn't up to Thanksgiving dinner, so turkey sandwiches filled the gap.... But life goes on despite the medication side effects.....

I  did a small teatime in the sunroom today in a rare break in the clouds and rain...we have had a very stormy few days....and we had found a childhood beginning-of-the holidays treat from my childhood...dark chocolate covered gingerbread. My English grandmother had a close friend from Germany who sent these to us each year for Christmas, but I haven't had any for years!

I have a wonderful Christmas design cup and saucer this week which you have seen before, but it is a Christmas favorite...

The holly and nut or pinecone pattern is called Noel by Royal Grafton, England and was made in the 1950s, and was also made by several other potteries...

The pattern was actually made by several different manufacturers. I have had the pattern by 6 that I know of, which is good because Christmas china is relatively difficult to find and you can mix and match manufacturers in this pattern at least and get enough for a matched set if that's what you want. I love the holly and pine cones. So festive!

I haven't gotten much of Christmas out yet, but did get out the Christmas teas...

and this was my favorite from last year, and I bought more in Victoria, BC a bit ago...so far, still my favorite...Christmas Tea from Murchie's.

The chocolate covered gingerbread biscuits are made by Bahlsen...a mildly spiced gingerbread...I really like it a bit spicier, but still a nostalgic taste...and look so inviting...

I put them in the family Noritake Revenna..... and here is what I have done decorating so far...sorry about the light, but it has been pouring!

And one of the first things out of the first Christmas box was this angel cross stitch on a frame I did about 20 years ago...I have lots of cross stitch projects around. I used to make everyone gifts, but they got overloaded! Lol! But I enjoyed making them! And plan to hopefully do a few more when my retina problem gets resolved...

On a server, I have here a few favorite things for Christmas. I have just started unloading the Christmas decorations and I also had to get out my 1992 The Heart Of Christmas by Victoria book...itis always the first off the bookshelf this time of year to peruse during a quiet teatime...much needed the last few weeks... 

Pleas forgive the photo quality...here in the Pacific Northwest at this time of year good natural light is a bit hard to come by!

This is a pair of Margaret Furlong shell ornaments that I treasure. One has a teapot and one has a teacup. I purchased them through Victoria Magazine about 1992 too, I think. I love her items. She is a wonderful artist who lives in Oregon.  I have several of them in various places around the house.

And also treasured for me are the crocheted Christmas tree forest I have that my mother made me over the years. The body or base is crocheted forest, then the shell branches and snow are added and they have a styrofoam cone inserted so they stand up. We used to live in Lassen National Forest so they are favorite decorations. Nostalgic!

And one of my antique postcards which I will be sharing during December as usual.  This one features a wonderful embossed, snow covered English church with holly and metallic gold. The postcard was postmarked Dec. 23, 1908 and mailed from Buffalo, New York to someone in Colden, New York.

To see more about the Noel cup and saucer at Antiques And Teacups, click on the photos.  I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving and didn't get too frazzled on the day after! I totally skipped any shopping this year...  Thanks for visiting and sharing a cuppa with me and have a wonderful week!

I will be joining the following blog parties: 

 Tea Cup Tuesday 
 Bernideen’s Teatime, Cottage and Garden
Home Sweet Home

Thanks so much for joining me for tea!  Here is the linky for your tea related posts...please remember that it is SSSLLLOOOOOOWWWW but if you are patient...it's there! And I love to read your comments, and I do read every one if I can find and can get to you to visit!  If you comment from Google+…it isn’t easy...so forgive me if I am not replying to comments you so kindly leave...I am trying!

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving! May it be filled with joy and gratitude!

I am thankful my eye was not the detached retina that was feared...just an age related tear that has mostly righted itself as much as it's going to...I am over 35!

And that my husband has a medication that is supposed to stop the decline of cognition now surfacing with his Parkinson's Disease that he is starting today...

This is a small cross stitch I did about 20 years ago that lives on our dining room wall...Let Us Give Thanks....and we do...have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Tuesday Cuppa Tea, Thanksgiving, West Coast Afternoon Tea, Tea Winner

Hello and welcome to Tuesday Cuppa Tea! Ad another interesting week in the saga...but too much info, already!

The week has been busy with planning our Thanksgiving dinner but mostly sitting through innumerable phone calls and visits to doctor's offices trying to get some clarification on medication changes ordered for my husband's Parkinson's Disease. But...life continues apace...blow from our local organic market Sunny Farms...

Tuesday Cuppa Tea this week will be about an afternoon tea we at the end of September in Victoria, BC Canada. We had a Canadian friend call who wanted to get together for a few hours while she was enroute on Vancouver Island, so we decided to go.  After our time with her, we decided on having afternoon tea. 

It happened to be during the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Vancouver Island, so we knew the Fairmont Empress was having a special Royal tea for 3 weeks...but, as we were last minute, it was booked up, so we had tea at the hotel Grand Pacific where we usually stay when in Victoria....

It is much more modern than the Empress, and convenient for us being right across the street from our Black Ball Ferry terminal. Their Pacific restaurant host their West Coast Afternoon tea... It's pretty minimalist decor...

I want to apologise in advance for the photos taken with my phone camera...not the best, but...this was the table setting...and notice the tea bowl instead of cup and saucer....the menu was definitely east/west and west coast in composition...lovely! And they have a tea sommelier!

There was a large selection of teas...green, white, black blended and wellness teas....I chose the Darjeeling...my favotire...and my husband had the Grans Pacific Blend especially blended for the hotel by Silk Road, a local tea blender.

The sommelier presented first the tea to show and explain them...The Organic Grand Pacific Tea is described as "A rejuvenating blend of ginger, green tea, lemongrass, lavender, rose, citrus and rose hips" and was delicious!

Each pot had a really cool locking steeper basket from the London Pottery Company.

The menu for the foods served was...in case you can't read this...

Amuse...

which in this case was a tempura Spot Prawn...a large local shrimp delicacy... skewered on a red pepper coulis...

Then the tower arrived...and contained savories on the bottom, then the scones and desserts on top:

Savories

Free run organic egg salad on smoked salmon rye bread pudding

Sake compressed cucumber on okonomi-yaki

Lime and sweet chile endamame

Chicken liver pate' on crostini

mini Dungeness Crab cake

Dill and baby Shrimp on mini croissant

Scones and  Sweets

Pumpkin spice financier

Vanilla bean scones with cream and jam

Flavoured scone...

ours were orange cranberry

Lemon raspberry mousse slice

Salted caramel chocolate tart...

absolutely incredible delicious...glad they were small...I think...

Praline profiteroles

assorted truffles and macarons

We didn't finish it all, and it was really delicious. They also sent us home with small ins of the Grand Pacific tea as momentoes. Very nice!

My Jim Shore Thanksgiving angel is out...and I came across this on Facebook this week and shared it on my page, but it certainly puts the last few weeks in a nutshell...a refocusing on blessings...

I hope your Thanksgiving is filled with blessings and joy. We are so thankful for so many blessings, and I am thankful for each one of you. Thanks for brightening my day with your comments and emails. Hopefully things will be sorta back to normal this week...if I haven't forgotten what normal is! Lol! 

And I wanted to announce the winner of the Winter Berry Blend Alaska tea drawing. The winner is: 

Sandra Garvey!

There is a big EMAIL ME button on my left sidebar...please send my your snail mail address!

Congratulations!

Also...my Black Friday Cyber Monday sale has started...here is the code for 15% off at Antiques And Teacups and Time Was Antiques

Sales on my Etsy shops will reflect the discounted prices starting Wednesday, Nov. 23rd

Antiques And Teacups at Etsy

Jewelry Discoveries

Ruth's Bargains

 Here are the blog parties I am joining:

 Tea Cup Tuesday 
 Bernideen’s Teatime, Cottage and Garden
Home Sweet Home

Thanks so much for joining me for tea!  Here is the linky for your tea related posts...please remember that it is SSSLLLOOOOOOWWWW but if you are patient...it's there! And I love to read your comments, and I do read every one if I can find and can get to you to visit!  If you comment from Google+…it isn’t easy...so forgive me if I am not replying to comments you so kindly leave...I am trying!

An InLinkz Link-up

Tuesday Cuppa Tea Black Transferware Tea, Fall Tea Giveaway!

Hello and so glad you came. I want to thank you all for your kind comments, emails and prayer for us on the loss of our dear Tinker. We are trying to move forward...it's slow, but...and still dealing with the fallout from my Honey's medical issues...exacerbated mightily by the grief...Parkinson's doesn't do well with any kind of stress. But...God will make a way...we believe that!

This week to keep busy between doctor visits I made some cookies, and decided to make a fall teatime for us in the sunroom....

I used some black and white transferware I got a  while ago and some fall decor I filched from the living room and dining room, including the gold and pumpkin colored woven runner that is usually on the buffet...

along with various pumpkins and gourds, and other autumn colored things...

I alway display my cross stitched wall hanging of the Fruit Of The Spirit from Galations 5:22-23 that I did a few years ago during the autumn and Thanksgiving season....

And I added one of the fall pumpkins and gourds padded tea cozies I have in the shop because I love the colors!

My teaset isby Wedgwood, England in a black transferware Italian landscape design called Lugano...named for a lake town in Italy....

If you look closely at the pattern, there is a man with a goat walking by the lake...how cute!

Here is the cream and sugar. The set is made of Queen's Ware, or what Wedgwood calls cream ware.

The shape is an older Wedgwood shape dating to the 19th century, but the pattern was actually made between 1962 and 1980. I do love Wedgwood.

A couple of weeks I pulled out the holiday teas. This is my favorite fall flavor...Pumpkin Spice from Republic Of Tea...yummy! Just makes my taste buds know it's fall!

And there has to be some goodies at our tea...comfort food in demand around here at the moment. I had some Heath bar nuggets left from Halloween...we had no trick or treaters, which we were thankful for having lost our cat that afternoon...so looked for another recipe and found this one in an old cookbook using full sized bars, so I guessed with the minis. They were really good! And the house smelled divine! So here is the recipe:

Toffee crunch cookies

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup butter, softened, two sticks

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups chopped Heath Bar or other toffee candy bar pieces, which is about 6-8 regular size 1.4 ounce bars, chopped by hand or in a food processor 

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.

In a mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until combined. Beat in eggs, one at a time, and vanilla and add to toffee pieces.

Alternately add in the toffee mixture and the flour mixture, a third at a time, until well blended.

Cover and chill cookie dough for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line cookie sheet with parchment

Roll chilled cookie dough into small, two-inch diameter balls and space 2 inches apart, as they spread while baking.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to brown, and do not overbake.

Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet for a few of minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack.

Tea GIVEAWAY

And one last thing...I have a giveaway for a packet of a special warming loose tea called Winter Berry Blend from The Kobuk Tea and Coffee House in Anchorage. I got some last summer, and liked it so well I ordered more of their teas, and wanted to share!

This blend says:  Warm up winter with this mint oil infused black tea mixed with dried raspberries, peppermint leaf and a hint of chocolate.

It has quite a scent of chocolate too, and is very nice! 2.5 ounces.
To enter, leave a comment saying ENTER. Open to US and Canada residents. I will pick a winner when the Tuesday Cuppa Tea meme closes on Sunday Nov. 20th at 5pm and announce the winner in next week's Tuesday Cuppa Tea post.

I am joining:

 Tea Cup Tuesday 
 Bernideen’s Teatime, Cottage and Garden
Home Sweet Home

Thanks so much for joining me for tea!  Here is the linky for your tea related posts...please remember that it is SSSLLLOOOOOOWWWW but if you are patient...it's there! And I love to read your comments, and I do read every one if I can find and can get to you to visit!  If you comment from Google+…it isn’t easy...so forgive me if I am not replying to comments you so kindly leave...I am trying!

An InLinkz Link-up