Sean was coming over to pick up the Avengers-Age of Ultron poster that Jack & I picked up for Donnovan and Cody thought it would be a good idea for some Tea!
We went with Lion's Blend from FridayTea's Etsy shop
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!
Brian came over for Friday Tea Time so that we could prepare for Fates Reforged Prerelease.
This was our soundtrack
And this was our tea, which I got from Friday's Etsy Shop
I am making tea in the pot that I purchased from Teavana
And drinking it out of this amazing cup I got for Christmas from Kate--it was also an Etsy purchase. Brian and Cody had a good time studying the Magic cards
I had printed out the LSV card ranking
Which are broken down by color and a really good introduction to the set
The tea, itself was rather odd looking in the pot with these amazing floating things--I am not really sure what they are--maybe mushroom?
In any event, the second Tea Time was significantly more helpful and fun than the first!
For Tea Time today Brian came over and we made Celebration Balls for the D&D Game I am running for Jacks friends on Saturday.
This was the first Tea Time I have ever attempted and the process needs a lot of refinement; specifically:
How many times can you resteep a pot of tea?
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.
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.
Friday sells some amazing tea over on Etsy as well as doing an amazing YouTube series which is largely my inspiration for Tea Time. I have made a New Year's Resolution to drink tea--the resolution to drink tea is based on this idea that it will lead to calm, conversation rich afternoons. Also, Battle of Five Armies has this incredible moment when Bilbo invites the dwarves to visit the Shire mentions that tea is at 4:00.
We randomly selected this tea from the variety pack I got from Friday--I will post our review of the actual tea drinking experience separately.
while the water was heating to 200 we collected our supplies for the celebration ball--Dice:
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
we dug through our bag of minis
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.
it poured out cleanly.
The only issue is that you cannot tell when the cup is full--next time I will use clear glass tea cups.
There was a little bit of Tea left in the pot, so we heated more water because I had heard from Michelle at Teavana that I could re-steep the leaves.
Brian, Jack, Lisa, & I got back to crafting--the wrapping was going well, we had decided to not use tape because we thought it would make unwrapping odd
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
Lisa had some two sided tape which we used to attach the token
here is the ball
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:
Aroma
Taste
Cost
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
There was a great animation for the brewing
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?