Teacups and Toasters

Ah, sweet blueberries! This tea had a nice mellow flavor. The blueberry was toned down and not at all tart. Fragrant, but not overly sweet, more in the way of blueberry muffin scent. I think this one’s a keeper. I’d buy a box of it all by itself.

The mad March Hare is featured on this box of green tea.  I feel I should mention that all the teas I have reviewed thus far are green teas (except the lemon honey is an herbal tea.) I cannot drink black tea for medical reasons and won’t be able to review those, which is a shame because the Red Queen hosts the Earl Grey box, and the smell of Earl Grey brings back wonderful memories of a little book shop I interned for in college.

At last, we have one more coming up: Mango with our dear Caterpillar who is “exacatically” 3 inches in height.

Seemingly, there are many articles about  New Year’s resolutions out and about this week, especially today. I’ve never liked New Year’s resolutions and have made very few of them. The ones I did make, I don’t remember triumphantly keeping. Perhaps a better way of handling things is to

A.) not wait for a new year

and

B.) realize what our weaknesses are daily- so that we can deal with them.

We all have weaknesses. Some serious and some silly, yet even the silliest can cause major problems. A couple of my silly weaknesses are Disney pins- look shiny!, random t-shirts, and decaf -soy- gingerbread- lattes. Yup. If I bought all three of those silly things on a regular basis, my bank account would be non-existent. I have to handle those weaknesses by only occasionally making purchases that satisfy my silliness.  By not drinking decaf- soy- gingerbread- lattes on a regular basis, I don’t need them on a regular basis. I don’t let myself get used to having them. I limit my Disney pin purchasing to one per trip. That might be a little extreme. Yet, that one pin will be something that will be a reminder of what was special about that particular trip.  And, by limiting my purchase to just one, if I happen to see another one online that I truly like during the year, I could potentially purchase it without feeling too guilty that I spent ten bucks on a little, tiny piece of metal.

I think that even if money were of no object, I’d have to be without a conscious to spend in silliness,while being aware of so many neighboring me who are struggling to get their next meal.

My point- don’t wait for New Year’s Eve to make a promise to yourself that will be near impossible to keep. Instead, search yourself; find your weaknesses both serious and silly. Figure out a way to sharpen yourself by overcoming those weaknesses. You may not be able to overcome a weakness in a year, but the only way to be true to yourself is to start trying. Silly promises made on a whim with a mere wish for a foundation, won’t get you very far. A prayer for a foundation will be of help, just remember that God gave you an awesome tool – your brain- and He’ll help you use it wisely if you seek to.

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas!

Stay tuned for the last two installments of the Wonderland Tea series coming later this week.

Imagine that you are in Nazareth at the time of Jesus life on Earth. You go to the synagogue every Sabbath and one day a local, Jesus, comes in. He’s back from spending forty days in the wilderness, not eating. He’s back in his home town and in He comes. He stands up to read and the book of Isaiah is handed to Him. He opens the book and chooses this passage:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

He closes the book and sits down. You, like everyone else present, stare at Him. This man who some have watched grow through boyhood has just proclaimed that He is the One. Jesus then turns to you all and says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The thing is… you know He’s not crazy. Why do we find it so hard to believe in miracles? I think that’s the question that we all need to ask ourselves. You can find the above scripture in Luke 4:14-21 and if you read a little further, you’ll find that He angers the crowd of Jews to the point that they chase Him out and are ready to push Him off the edge of a cliff. Why? He was bringing peace to the Gentiles and not just Jews. He told them this with more quotations from the Old Testament. This was huge and mortifying to those gathered in the synagogue.

Knowing Jesus will bring huge and mortifying things into our own lives as His Light reveals what we cannot hide. The Truth of His Word is powerful and life changing. I pray that you have found it this Christmas and are willing to embrace the One.

“Like a tea tray in the sky..”

I thought two posts in one day would be appropriate, since I got a little behind.  I really do like chamomile tea. I love the taste and the fragrance. Lemon and honey are of course a good natural weapon when combating a cold. The rest of my family has one. So, I thought I’d drink this too, for good measure.  It was indeed enjoyable for the most part, but did have a bitter aftertaste. The lemon was the dominate flavor. However, I added 1/2 tsp of honey and about the same amount of white sugar. That seemed to help a bit.  If you’ve got a cold, this is a nice choice and it’s sure to warm up your vocal chords. You’ll be singing, “twinkle twinkle little bat,” in no time.

(Love that door mouse.)

My apologies for taking so long to get on to the next post on Disney’s Wonderland Tea. The Jasmine tea tastes rather like a flower. I’m sure this does not come as a surprise to those of you who have had jasmine teas before. I hadn’t. So this was new and I really did learn a lot of things from the flowers – Like I’d rather smell Jasmine tea than drink it. Oh, it really wasn’t bad, and got progressively better the further I drank.

I’d drink it again, but so far the Mint holds place number 1, for me.

“Unless the Lord had given me help,
I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.

When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’
your love, O Lord, supported me.”

Psalm 94:17-18

“And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.”

Isaiah 62:5

I think I’m working on a mini series of Alice’s tea…which is technically Disney Wonderland Tea. Of course, it probably all belongs to the Red Queen.

Say, “How do you do and shake hands, shake hands! How do you do and shake hands!”

It didn’t have much flavor. Curious thing. Well, not too strong on the passion fruit, that is, which left me a little passionless about spending my unbirthday sipping away at tea that tastes like tea.

Moving on to the next flavor. “That’s Logic!”