Melissa’s Cozy Teacup

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On this week’s assignment form La Tea Dah, we’re to Share tea from the perspective of literature. and to also share how we bless others with tea. My journey to the land of, ‘I love tea’ has followed a long and winding path. Though exposed to the beauty of tea by taking my first formal afternoon tea at The Empress Hotel over twenty years ago, it didn’t find a foot hold in my heart until a few years ago when I worked at a friend’s tea room as a hostess/waitress. A good deal of ’stuff’ went down at the tea room but it was there that I began flirting with, and ultimately fell in love with, tea and all that encompasses it. The smell of a newly opened package of tea. The fizz and spit of the hot water making contact with the tea leaves. The anticipation of the taste of well brewed tea. The fact that the flavor of tea is enhanced by sitting down and enjoying it, where as coffee is associated with madly dashing about and being in a hurry. I enjoy associating tea with gentleness and civility.

When I think of drinking coffee and tea out of doors, for coffee, I picture cowboys on the open range, a sunrise and the sounds of cattle nearby, for tea, a regency or Victorian picnic with all the trimmings including parasols, linens and china, hampers filled to bursting with goodies and couples having fun on the side of lush green hills.

Mention a Jane Austen novel or afternoon tea to a woman, and her eyes light up and a smile crosses her face. She longs for the time to enjoy such luxuries but is unable due to budgetary or time constraints. Perhaps this is why I developed a desire to give a moment of beauty, however brief or simple, to those around me.

Some are receptive while others strive,with great effort, to keep themselves too busy to enjoy the gift of life around them. Sometimes I can bring ladies together, sometimes I cannot. As the saying goes, ‘Sometimes the urgent gets in the way of the important’. Is getting together with other ladies for tea important? I believe it is as important as air or water.

That said, I must share with you some of what is going on, though not for the sake of being maudlin. I have sent my query and the first 50 pages of my novella to an agent. Times being what they are, in the mean time while waiting to hear back from her, I will need to get a job. My prayer is that the book will open other doors leading to opportunities I’m not privy too at this moment. So, the hospitality I am able to extend will naturally be diminished as my time is taken up with the urgent and mundane. How can you help? By praying my book is accepted and published sooner rather than later-this year!! That I would find a job that would not be too demanding on my time or person so that home group night is not affected.

Well, enough of that. Here are a couple of books I wanted to show you. I have some of the ones that La Tea Dah has displayed on her blog and I have enjoyed them immensely. I thought I would show you something a bit different.

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You can link to Quin’s page from this picture. I could not find anything about Laura.

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Although copyrighted in 1993, this book has been a wonderful guide to me on how to be a hostess. It teaches, by example, what not to do. It is appropriate for the novice hostess as well as the experienced. It instructs on how to prepare your home to receive guests, and how to do it within a limited budget if need be. It teaches us how to receive which, if you’re being hospitable towards others, you may be too focused on giving and not be able to easily switch to ‘receiving mode’. My husband and I were treated to lunch Sunday by some friends of ours who also attend home group. I was joking with the husband about how now I would have to cook on Wednesday since they were treating us to lunch. (they had offered to bring dinner for Wednesday and I had accepted and thought that lunch would cancel out dinner not thinking they would be able to do both, I was happily mistaken). To me, it does seem a bit extravagant to be treated to lunch on Sunday by the same couple who are bringing dinner on Wednesday, however, when we deny people the opportunity to do something for us, be deny them of the blessings they would receive for their actions. My husband and I receive many blessings from hosting a group in our home on a regular basis. It is tangible. How could I rob someone of that? How could you? If someone has been trying to bless you lately and you’ve been dodging their efforts, let them serve you, bless you, treat you. You never know, it could be God working through them in ways you won’t know until you get to heaven. Wow, wouldn’t that be amazing? Imagine, you get to heaven and there’s a group of people who greet you and begin the conversation with, ‘remember when we were on earth and you let me to (whatever) for you? Well, let me tell you about the doors that it opened up for me and the things it broke off of me.’ Remember, what you let loose here on earth, you let loose in heaven. What you bind on earth, you bind up in heaven.

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I like this one, just because it’s pretty! lol We can’t always be deep. Even Jesus had His fun. This book just makes me smile. It has great photographs of teapots, food, flowers, the English countryside, period clothing, food served on fine china and on harvest/kitchen tables. When I open it and flip through its pages, I pretend I’m there, sipping tea, watching the afternoon sun travel across the hard wood floors. It also contains recipes and stories which provide a glimpse into the small moments that make life worth living.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading about these two books. Cheerio!