Tuesday 4 ~ Coffee? Tea?

 Coffee? Tea?

Welcome once again to Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4.



The longest living cat on record, Creme puff, lived to be 38 years old and was given coffee at breakfast all his life. Breakfast for him was bacon, eggs, broccoli and coffee.
The previous ownder of the record was Grandpa Rex Allen who\ lived to be 34 years old on the same diet.
Coffee reduces chances of Alzheimers, Parkinsons.
Tea without adding milk can "tan" your bladder making for many problems Milk binds the tanic acid making it safe to drink.
Homemade food increases an animal's life span too. Let's talk about it, okay?


1. Coffee increases a bee's memory and does the same for you. Bees love caffeinated coffee flowers. What do you love about coffee or tea?
Oh dear...I don't drink coffee at all. Never could develop a taste for it. My mother loved her coffee every morning, but my Dad preferred tea, although I never saw him drink it regularly.  My hubby drinks coffee,  so I make a pot for him every morning, and I drink tea while he enjoys his coffee. What do I love about tea? Well, it helps to start my day off right...it helps me wake up and it also helps with things like regularity! (you asked, so I'm telling. LOL).  I love the variety of different kinds of teas, but I mostly stick with Lipton's black tea every day and save the others for special occasions.

2. If you opened a tea or coffee shop in your neighborhood what would it be named? How would you decorate it? Would pastry or cake be served?

I've always thought it would be fun to have a Tea Party place. It would be a special place for ladies (or men if they so desire) to gather with their friends or their daughters, mothers, sisters...and be treated to a really fun and happy tea party. It would be decorated with all kinds of tea pots and cups and saucers, and lovely table settings that make every person feel really special when they come there.  Ladies would be encouraged to wear fancy hats and gloves, and dress up for a fun party. I may have to name it something like "Pamela's Victorian Cottage and Tea Room".   As far as food, yes, pastries, tea cakes, and other special tea party foods...scones, dainty dishes of delightful food...but there would be healthy food too...not all sweets.

It would be fun to have an outdoor garden tea room...I found this on the internet and I really love it. Someday I'm going to do this!

Internet Photo

3. Beethoven required 60 beans per cup of coffee. How particular are you about your coffee or tea?
I'm not THAT particular, but I like my hot tea hot, and I don't like it too strong or too weak. It needs to be JUST RIGHT! LOL.

4.Italian clergy in1600s declared coffee the devil's brew and forbid it.
Pope Clement the VIII wanted to taste it, loved it and blessed it ... today, new research shows black coffee is drunk mainly by psychopaths...
Sweden banned coffee in 1746 as dangerous and Islam banned it for causing free thinking!
How do you take your coffee you free thinking, radical and what's your favorite brand of devil's brew?

Since I don't drink coffee I don't have a favorite brand. The price of coffee lately has been ridiculous. Hubby drinks either Maxwell House or Folgers, whichever one is on sale. He's not particular, but he sure wants it hot and fresh!  I am thankful that he's not real particular about brands, etc.,  and that he's not into the current coffee trend of having to go to places like Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, etc., to get a special coffee all the time. I honestly don't know how people afford it. Our little town just recently got a new Dunkin Donuts place, and it amazes me to see the line of cars around the building every day, waiting for their coffee or latte or whatever it is they are getting. I never knew coffee and donuts was so popular!  

Here's a link to one of my posts about tea parties.  There's a lot more in the side bar under the categories of Tea Time or Tea Party.

I found this in a little book by Emilie Barnes, entitled "Everything I know I Learned Over Tea".

In case you can't read that, it says; 

"A Loving Recipe for a Perfect Cup of Tea"

"1 willing friend who loves to sit and share

1 grateful heart to have a friend that cares

1 beautiful garden to show us God is near

Many wonderful memories of times shared throughout the years

Lots of smiles and laughter to brighten up our days

Many prayers that we prayed for each other along the way."

Author Unknown

And that, to me, is what tea time is all about. Or it could be coffee time. I guess it all depends on the heart and attitude of those enjoying the time together, no matter what the "brew".  

Thank you, Annie, for being our hostess. I've missed out on the past few weeks of Tuesday 4, so I thought this would be a good one to jump back in again.  If you wish to join in the fun, you can go HERE and join in!  Whatever you do, have a lovely day!!

My new TEA mug, hard at work already!

Tuesday 4~The Best Part of Waking Up

 ~~The Best Part of Waking Up~~

Well hello again! I am so glad you stopped by and I do hope you are here to join in for Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4.
We ask 4 questions each week to get you blogging, thinking, discussing and visiting with other bloggers.

The commercial song said "the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup".

1. What is in your cup in the morning? 

Tea!  No coffee for me, but I do make it for my hubby every day.

2. What brand of coffee or tea is the best in your opinion and why do you think so?

Well, I prefer Lipton's tea for my everyday cuppa. But I do drink other brands and varieties when I want to have a little "tea party".  

Twinings makes a lot of good teas. There are many different herbal teas and loose teas that I like to try,

 but I always go back to Lipton for my morning cup of hot tea and also to make iced tea.

Our Tea and Coffee Station

As far as coffee goes, hubby isn't picky, so I usually buy whichever one is on sale, Folgers or Maxwell House, and he is happy with that.

3. Where do you drink your cuppa in the morning? Do you have a nice view?

Yes, I usually sit here at my computer in the morning and drink my cup of tea while I check messages and comments on blogs, read blogs, etc., and I also can look out the window in "my room with a view" while I write. However, oftentimes it is still dark when I am drinking my cuppa tea, so I really don't see anything until later on. 

4.Besides the morning, do you take little tea or coffee breaks during the day? If you are out and about where is your favorite place to get some tea or coffee?

In the winter time I am more apt to take a hot tea break in the afternoon, and sometimes I do in the summer as well if I am feeling a little tired or just need to sit and relax and think about something else for a while.  I usually have iced tea with my lunch.  

Oftentimes I will sit here in my rocking chair in this little section of the kitchen and drink a cup of tea while cooking supper or baking cookies. That way I can keep an eye on things cooking while I relax. As you can see, I have plenty of company. LOL.  Lily Grace and her friends are always ready for a tea party. 

And sometimes I enjoy having a little tea party on the porch...this was a few years ago when Lily Grace and her dog Bailey and I did just that!

I may need to do this again before it gets too hot!! It would be nice to have someone join me...it's always more fun when you have someone to share this time with you. And if you'd prefer, I could make coffee for you!

As far as a place to go and get some tea or coffee, there really isn't such a place here, at least not that appeals to me. They have just opened a Dunkin' Donuts here in our little town, but it is mostly a coffee kind of place and also primarily a drive-through, although I did just notice that they have a few tables outside...but who wants to sit there when it's 90 degrees and drink something hot? Not me!

HERE is a link to a post I wrote about this a couple of years ago.  And also, if you click on Tea Time in the side bar of the blog, or Tea Party, you will find many other posts about tea time from the past.

Friday Foto Friends

 Happy Friday Morning! "Baby it's cold outside!"   Our early morning temperature was 34, but the "feels like" temperature was 23 F at 6 a.m.  Our high today will only be 55.  That's pretty doggone chilly for us here in north central Florida in the latter part of February! Not unheard of, but still a bit unusual, especially after we were lulled into a false sense of Spring a week ago!  But spring is definitely still in the air, just a bit on the cold side!

Mrs. Sand Hill Crane is all hunkered down on her nest on Still Waters Pond!  I walked around to where I could see her yesterday afternoon, hoping she would stand up long enough for me to see how many eggs she has...

But, alas! My camera memory card decided to announce that it was all full and I couldn't take any more pictures at that time. Thankfully, she didn't stand up so I didn't miss anything. I will have to try again today when it warms up a little bit.  Right now it's 34 degrees and I'm not going out for anything if I don't have to! LOL.  I know...you folks up north think I'm a big sissy! Well, maybe I am, but at least I'm a warm big sissy! LOL.

Yesterday wasn't quite as cold, thankfully, and hubby and I drove about an hour + south through the forest to meet up with his brother Billy and wife Peggy and their son Nicholaus for lunch, and to celebrate a belated hubby's birthday with them. They live about another hour south of that location, so this little favorite restaurant, "The Mason Jar", is a good half way meeting place.

Here's hubby and his brother Billy...it took a couple of pictures to get both of them to look at me... LOL.

Here's my sister in law Peggy and yours truly, with our friend the bear:

And here's Peggy and Nicholaus...who still loves to play this game with me when I want to take his picture.  He has a nice profile, don't you think? LOL.  We love Nick...he's such a good sport and a great young man, who is finishing up his bachelor's degree in Psychology (and something else, I'm not sure exactly).  It's always good to have a psychologist/counselor in our crazy family...LOL.

I took this picture of a picture hanging on the wall in the restaurant lobby.  This place is back in my home territory where I grew up, and this is a picture of the Lake County Sheriff's Department back in the late 1950's.  The man wearing the suit 2nd to the left is Sheriff Willis V. McCall, and those men are his deputies. That picture was taken in front of the county courthouse, and this is significant, because my mother used to work in that office  right behind them. She was a secretary to the Sheriff in the early 60's.  I knew most of those deputies as I used to go to her office after school a lot of the time, and also they became friends with our family.  However, if you look up the Sheriff, you will find that he was rather notorious in the history of Lake County, back during the days of segregation in the south prior to when the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land. Let's just say that my mother had her eyes opened to many unpleasant things when she took that job in that office, but she was an excellent secretary and handled her position very professionally.

It was interesting to see this bit of history from an era long gone now.

Speaking of history,  this is going on in our little town of Interlachen right now.  This old historical building, A.K.A. "The Brush Store", is finally being renovated after a bad fire several years ago.  

These are photos below of how it used to look many years ago, when it was a prosperous little general store and the Post Office.  More recently it was a rental home until the fire.

1943-44

This is how it looked in 1885.  Our church is right down the street, on the right side, but this picture may have been taken even before our church was built in 1887.

 The same building in 1915

I don't know if the people doing the current renovation are going to restore it back to the original, or make it into a house again. Originally the owners of the store lived upstairs.  I would LOVE to see this restored back to the "original", with a store downstairs, but that probably wouldn't be cost effective for them, so we shall see what develops.  I'm just glad they aren't tearing it down as it has so much history.

This is also in our historical downtown:

And, as I mentioned in a previous post, our little town is growing again...we will soon have a Dunkin' Donuts:

I guess you could call that progress? Maybe...maybe not. LOL.

One of my blogging friends, Bernideen's Tea Time, Cottage and Garden, shares lovely photos of her tea parties and garden and beautiful table settings in her home "tea room".    In her latest post (linked above), she stated that "February Means Time for Violets".  Since I was wanting to put away my red Valentines decor and replace it with something else, her suggestion led me to look for the violet and other spring time tea sets that I have.  So here's what I came up with:

First of all, I just realized that this sweet little basket of flowers on the Susan Branch calendar for February this year is actually a basket of violets, although they are pink and not the traditional "violet" purple color:

This is a miniature tea set that was given to me by a dear friend from our church who was moving away and downsizing.  Isn't it beautiful?

Lily Grace thought so, and wanted to put on something purple to wear instead of her red Valentine's dress...

The other tea sets are gifts from family in the past...all special treasures to me!

Hubby gave me this beautiful little sugar and creamer (see below) from a trip he made to California one time for a Pastor's conference. He was able to take a tour of the Queen Mary ship that is docked there, and he bought these for me and had to carry them in his lap on the plane all the way back home to Ohio (I think that's where we lived at the time).  When he stepped off the plane to greet me, he handed me this little bag with these in it and said, "Here, take these quick before I drop them! I've been holding them for hours on this trip because I didn't want to pack them in my suitcase for fear they would get broken!"  

So they are especially special to me!

This little violet small tea set was a gift from my Mother and Father years ago, so it is also a treasure.  The larger tea cup and saucer, I am not sure where it came from, 

and the cannister behind it was a gift from a friend also.

Oh, and that "The Tea Party Book" was also a gift from one of my dear blogging friends! It has all kinds of fun ideas for tea parties for children and others as well.  And the sweet tea pot on the left was a gift from my sister Doris many years ago.

Since violets seem to be such a special flower, I looked it up to find out if there is any other information that was meaningful about the violet.  Here is a link to a post about Violet Flower Meaning & Symbolism, that certainly had a lot more information than I ever realized about the sweet little violet flower.   I thought this was interesting:

"Victorian Era

In the Victorian era, the “language of flowers” became popular, and violets were a significant part of this tradition. They symbolized modesty, faithfulness, and everlasting love. Violets were often included in bouquets and gifts to convey these sentiments.

The sweet fragrance of violets made them popular in the perfume industry. Violets were used to create perfumes and scented products, contributing to their popularity in Victorian society."

Speaking of everlasting love...

1 John 4:12 NKJV

"12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, 

God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us."

And also speaking of Lily Grace, her little wardrobe has expanded over the past few years, and the original box I had to hold all of her special things has become too small. (the one on the bottom).

I love these boxes that they sell at the Dollar General. They come in so many different colors, styles and sizes, and this one with the bluebirds on it seemed to be the perfect one to hold the extra shoes, hair ribbons, and other little things that little girls accumulate:

Now hopefully we can keep her things more organized and easier to find!  Whew! I never knew little girls could accumulate so much stuff! LOL.  

Speaking of Bluebirds:  Our bluebirds are continuing to visit the birdhouse regularly, but to my knowledge they still haven't built a nest.  One day at a time.  I've already shared this picture before, but my camera was acting up again when I wanted to take a current picture of them a few minutes ago, and so I didn't think you'd mind seeing this one again...

Some words of wisdom from God's Word and others from yesterday's calendar page...

And with that I will close this post for today. Praying you will each have a blessed and faith-filled weekend.

Tuesday 4 ~ A Little Tea Party

A Little Tea Party

 

Welcome back to another of Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4.

For my southern friends.. I pray the weather lightens up on you all. I know it's been a very rough summer heat wise. Let's pray together for a solution.

This week could we talk about your personal thoughts?

1. Do you find yourself day dreaming about your situation and things you would love to do if only...?

Sometimes...but I try not to think about the "if only" part so much, because I've learned in life that it is best to live in the present and do the very best you can with what you have. Day dreaming about what you would do "if only" can lead to wishing you could change your situation and sometimes that can get you into trouble.  I mean, it is okay to have dreams and goals that are positive and uplifting, but the best thing to do is make the best of what you have and be thankful.  Sometimes we have to be careful that we might get what we wish for and find out that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but not necessarily as wonderful as what you already have.

2. If you are having tea/coffee, a little break in the day does your mind wander off to other thoughts and meditations.

I think it is good to allow yourself to take little breaks during the day and rest from whatever you have been doing and let your body totally relax and be refreshed. Our minds and bodies need times of pure calm and restoration, and then our meditations will be sweeter than if we are always stressed out over things.  These are times when I find God speaking to me the most, if I will only pay attention.  

I used to make it a practice to go to my "Secret Garden" and just sit and meditate on God's Word, and perhaps find an old hymn from the hymnbook and let the words speak to me.  Here is an example of that from the Secret Garden Chronicles.  I really need to get back into that habit.

3. Do you find yourself meditating or revisiting in your mind a scripture, verse from a book you've read and it's impact on you?

My life verse: 

Psalm 19:14 NKJV
14 "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer."

HERE is a post I wrote about how I discovered this verse. You may find it an interesting and happy little post.

4. Do you find yourself sometimes replaying conversations with others? Are there books or movies that stay vivid in your mind?

It depends on the type of conversations...sometimes I may wander into ruminating over old conversations that I probably shouldn't revisit. And then I need to refocus my thoughts on the present and get back into God's Word so I won't become distracted by things that may have hurt me in the past. It is best to keep looking upward and onward to the wonderful things God has in store for those who love Him.    

1 Corinthians 2:9 KJV

9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

And with that, I will close this post while I go have a little tea party with the fairies....

Lily Grace is already having her summertime picnic tea party with her little fairy friends.  Kind of the last hurrah of the summer before going back to school...which actually our kids in our town/county have already done yesterday!  Seems too soon to me, but maybe not for the parents or the kids LOL.

Let's go see what others are saying about this today!  Thank's Annie for a great Tuesday 4!