More is More

Warning:

the following is a rambling NSR post ’cause sometimes I just have stuff to say.

I love going to tea and have for many years.  It’s not the tea I love (although it’s nice enough) it’s the experience.  Sitting in a beautiful tea room and being served pretty and tasty food in dainty morsels that still fills you up…and most importantly relaxing with friends.  I hadn’t been to tea in about a year, until this past week when I got to go twice.  How cool is that?

Last Sunday I went to Vintage Tea Leaf with PACT (my women’s prayer group).  Each year we get together to go to tea to celebrate all of our birthdays.  We each buy a special birthday gift for one other member of the group.

Vintage Tea Leaf is my all-time favorite tea room.  It has mostly traditional English Victorian style and one of my favorite things is the large selection of beautiful china teacups where Beverly invites you to choose one to sip from for the afternoon.  We had yummy moist scones and a wide variety of tea sandwiches along with three different pots of tea.

Vintage Tea Leaf is located in Long Beach and the tea we selected – 2 scones and your choice of 4 pair of tea sandwiches along with unlimited pots of tea – was $20 an average fair price.

Then on Friday I was asked to go to tea with two girlfriends I hadn’t seen much of in awhile.  We decided to try a fairly new tea room called Paris in a Cup. It has a Parisian Salon feel and the decor is absolutely beautiful!  Their menu is just slightly more varied than most tea rooms and includes coffees along with the hot and iced tea choices.

The scones were small, but wonderful.  They had vanilla cream and orange chocolate scones the day we were there.  Those of you who know me, know my ban on chocolate touching or being mixed with fruit so I requested two vanilla and they accomodated me.  Kim and Judy said the orange chocolate was quite yummy and I looked the other way.

Paris in a Cup is a tea room I will definitely go back to.  It is located in Old Towne Orange amongst all the boutiques and antiques shops and is a little more expensive than VTL.  We choose to have scones, tea sandwiches (we were served 3 as opposed to the 8 at VTL), a small cup of soup, and cookies (the cookies were the only disappointing part) for $23.  Although it doesn’t sound like a lot of food we were all quite full when we finished.

After tea we walked around and shopped a bit and I purchased a vintage tea towel in the colors I hope to re-do my kitchen in.  It will be a great inspiration piece.  As if all of this didn’t make for a nice enough day, I returned home to see flowers left on my front porch with a very sweet note from an out-of-state friend.

Another one of the lilys has opened up since I took this photo.  I was just blown away by this thoughtfulness.

While at tea on Friday talk turned to shoes (and afterall what would a tea be without some discussion of shoes or fashion).  My friend Judy was telling us about some red shoes she had found at an awesome discount store.  Well, wouldn’t you know that I have been looking for red shoes and what she described sounded perfect.   Today Curt and I needed to go to Costco and I talked him into taking me to find this shoe store first.  It was a HUGE store and I think Curt started to quake in his boots when we walked in the door.  It was the kind of store I could spend all day in.  I promised to hurry and he was such a trooper.  He went down every aisle with me to help me scout out what I was looking for.  I never did find the shoes Judy told me about, but no worries, I ended up with super cute red shoes just the same.

Check out these adorable low healed red sandals by Guess!  There’s just nothing better than a pair of new red shoes!  Oh and in the background is the vintage tea towel I mentioned earlier – so pretty!  I’m excited because I got a new Liz & Co. skirt and top outfit about a week ago and I even bought jewelry to match.  Now I have the shoes.  I can’t remember the last time I had a whole new outfit including jewelry and shoes.  I’ll be stylin’ for church tomorrow – not that that’s what it’s all about, but it doesn’t hurt!  LOL!  I’ve been missing my best friend Ruth (she lives in WA now).  No one shops like Ruth!  Since she moved (oh and since I’ve put on weight) I just have a harder time pulling together whole outfits with all the accessories.  So Ruth…know that I bought these shoes with you in mind.

For anyone still reading – thanks for indulging my ramblings and I hope you’ll make reservations to go to tea with some girl friends really soon!  Don’t forget tomorrow (Sunday) is the last day of new challenges being posted for DTGD.  Then you’ll have another week or two toplay and catch up.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jami