Tag: Tea

On Palm Sunday, Cody and I had a tea time. We made Friday Tea’s Caramel Apple Black Tea:

The tea was rather old, but seemed to have held up well

The Tea brewed up well.

Cody really enjoyed drinking the tea–he did add a LOT of sugar to his tea.

This week we tried Friday’s Vanity Blend from her Etsy Shop.

Cody was surprised by the dash of blue.

 The tea brewed quickly & smelled fantastic!

We poured out two cups–the first one was much darker then the second for some reason.

 And we served it up Brick Style which is a new invention for us.

A relaxing start to the weekend!

I am still using the tea pot that I got from Tevana–mostly because I love how well you can reheat and/or brew a second pot without making a giant mess or loosing to much flavor.

The tea looked solid & brewed up nicely

 Sean was running late and since we had to get Kate to dance Cody & I moved the poster out onto the patio

Cody added a lot of sugar



And some white chocolate chips

 It was a fun afternoon.

It looks like Friday has not posted a video in  a while, I really hope that she is not done with that video series–I really enjoy it!

Lisa set up an amazing table.

Cody & I started up a game of Hare and Tortoise, likely our favorite family game these days.

We got the racers to the starting gate

But then got confused by the Vegan Lemon Cookies and the rules

So we tried to select a tea. I still have a lot of teas from Friday’s Etsy shop–likely three more weeks worth.

Even though he thought it looked like pepper

It brewed up beatifully



I may have steeped it too long.

But the taste was not all that great–likely the least favorite of the teas we have tried so far.

1. How many times can you resteep a pot of tea?
2. I am using water temp 200 degrees & steep time of 2 minutes as a rule of thumb–is there a better method to determine this than ‘taste’? I have what I think are single use tea packets so I don’t have room to experiment.
3. What is the debris floating on the surface of the tea–is that normal or am I doing something wrong?

Basically, I am glad the first time does not count! The event started with me having On Call work issues & the relaxation part of tea time did not happen. Also, the principle that tea time leads to better conversation was challenged as well–primarily because the craft and kids took up a lot of our attention, but also because of this work thing that had me distracted–ideally next time things will go a bit smoother.

Player boons–mostly the same ones that Tara had used.

Lisa used a Creative Memories paper cutter to chop these up while laughing at my amazing Craft Project–evidently she had made these exact same paper wrapped balls for Halloween two years ago & I had either forgotten or never known…good husband!

We added some tattoos which have nothing to do with the adventure we will be playing but are always fun

to find some for the boys

and selected these four — mostly from the latest WotC set

The streamers we bought at Target while shopping for Skylanders earlier in the day

Back to the tea, we added the tea to my new Teavana pot

And poured in the water

it started making tea immediately–we did a 2 minute steep on this pot. I think that this was not long enough & three minutes would have been better–also the tea cooled very quickly once cupped–I think that the water could have been hotter, but I am new to this and not sure…Over all we would re-steep the leaves three times, I have no idea if this is appropriate.

I grabbed some very simple cups–a little on the small side as well since I was not sure how it was going to taste.

The only issue is that you cannot tell when the cup is full–next time I will use clear glass tea cups.

Jack was doing a great job

We wanted that combo color pattern at the end so we folded the streamer in half

which was actually the hardest part

it was super hard to fold it in half cleanly

Jack started re-steeping the third pot

We then started work on how to review tea–we started with trying to decide on the categories we would use–we came up with:

1. Aroma
2. Taste
3. Cost
4. Re

which did not work very well–cost makes no sense in our context & re was just a mistake–we will likely be refining our review model in the future & I will have separate post with our teams actual votes.

for the third pot we had also downloaded the Teavana timer

that closely resembled the activity in the pot

on some of the cups there was a fine layer on the top the tea–I assume that this was tea that had not been filtered properly–Kate was concerned about this, so I will work on it.

Kate added honey to her tea

Cody got a cup of dill pickles to go with our tea

Kate added milk to her tea as well as the honey.

And then Lisa got the scottish brittle out for Brian to try & we destroyed it–one of the best holiday treats that she has ever made–seriously this stuff is gamer crack

Here are the finished products–please let me know which one of the following you think looks the best–A, B, C, or D. Not that we are being competitive with our crafting…but you know…

Also, at the end we had tea leaves in our cup–is there an easy way to read these tea leaves?

I have no experience with Tea. At all.




I have purchased tea from Friday.

I have purchased equipment from Nichole from Teavana.  Which included a book that had more details on tea which was very helpful.