Tea Time!

      4 Comments on Tea Time!

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Last Thursday  was such a great day. 🙂  My neighbor, who has twin girls my son Jamie’s age (13), invited me to accompany her, her girls, and her sister to Greenfield Village for tea. It was at Cotswold Cottage, which is a lovely cottage built in the style of old English cottages in Greenfield Village (a huge historical park in Dearborn, Michigan).  You know I love my history, so this was positively a joy for me!  I took a ton of pictures (of course), but I’ll just share a few to let you get a feel for how lovely it was.

Cotswold Cottage is in the back of the Village, and of course I dressed up for it, high-heeled shoes and all, so my feet were killing me by the time I got there. :p But it was worth it!  The grounds were just stunning.

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The menu includes something called “The Full Tea Experience,” so of course I ordered that. 😉  You had your choice to have your tea either hot or iced, and even though it was a warm July day, I felt compelled to have hot tea, because, well…it was a tea!  I ordered the hibiscus blend, and although I’m not a big tea fan, I found it to be delicious!

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I took that shot while the waitress was pouring, and she looked a little shocked when I did it, ha ha!

Included in the “full tea experience” are the following:

  • Tea sandwiches
  • Scone with clotted cream and jam
  • Tea cookies
  • Pot of hot tea

And here’s what it looked like when it came out.

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Okay, it didn’t exactly look like that when it came out. The sandwiches on the bottom were actually in a separate box (to keep them chilled, I assume), but I made sure to plate them for the full effect. 😉  I’m not sure what all the different sandwiches are, but I do know that one was cucumber.

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And since I love cucumber, that was right up my alley!  I think the others were a chicken salad sandwich, a piece of crusty bread with some kind of spinach dip, and then a small piece of brown bread with a spread topped with walnuts. (I did not eat the walnuts–ick.)  On the bottom left was a delightful blueberry scone, which was made even more delightful by…

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See that little cup of white stuff on the right? That, my friends, is clotted cream, and it is my new favorite thing in all the land.  I put it on top of the scone, the tea cookies, the strawberry, my bare spoon…ohmigosh, it was so good!!  You can see they also included strawberry jam, but I get plenty of that in my life (and it’s damn good, if I do say so myself), so that didn’t excite me too much.  The clotted cream though…I may need to figure out a recipe for that little delight!  By the way, that brown cookie was actually really, really hard…but once I put some clotted cream on it–I didn’t care! 😉

The gardens were just stunning, and lucky for us, we had a perfect day to enjoy them.

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That last one is a chipmunk who enjoyed a lunch of flowers while we had tea!

I took a ton of garden pictures,  but I also took some people pictures, too.

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That one is me with my neighbor, who is a very good friend.  I really wanted to share the picture of me with her twin girls, but they’re just kids and I didn’t ask for permission, so I won’t.  But trust me when I say they are just adorable! 🙂

I really enjoyed the afternoon…the girls play piano and dance (including pointe ballet!), and it was so fun to talk about “girl” type things for a change.  They’re in the same class as Jamie, so it was interesting to hear about the kids in the class from a teenaged girl perspective. That compares to the perspective I usually get, which is “closed-mouthed teenaged boy.” 😉

I ate every single thing on that tray (except the walnuts) and drank the whole pot of tea.  I felt that the “full tea experience” was worth whatever the points were, and so I didn’t worry about it too much.  I did track it to the best of my ability, but obviously, something like that is hard to gauge.  Maybe if I were a Weight Watchers member in England it wouldn’t be so hard, ha ha!

I ran intervals on Friday (7 x 400, go me!), then 8 miles on Saturday with Ann and Toddra, and then another mile on Sunday with JJ.  When the week was over, I actually felt pretty damn good, body-wise.  I mean, I felt “thin,” and my clothes were feeling a little less tight than they had been.  I checked the scale, and…

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That’s down .6 from the prior week.  I honestly thought it would be more–I just felt that good, you know?  But even though it wasn’t much, I know that a loss is a change in the right direction, so I won’t grumble too much. Onward and forward!

And one last thing to share: most readers of my blog know about our family’s hockey issues, and Jamie’s struggle to find a team this season after the debacle that happened in late spring.  You can go here to read the back story, but in a nutshell, Jamie tried out for but did not make any of the teams for his age division in our area this season.  After 5 years of travel hockey, we were concerned that he’d have to go back to house (a lower level than he’s used to playing).  In the end, we ended up going with a team in the division one year older than Jamie’s actual age (they call it “playing up”).  The team is probably more of a “start-up” team that will need some work, but at least it’s travel.

So yesterday, Jamie had the first day of a 4-day hockey clinic that is geared toward only defensive players.  He was in class for an hour, then on the ice for 2 hours.  And then he had a team practice!  I was going to let him slide and inform the coach he was too tired, but he insisted he was fine! ( And yet, I can’t get him to sweep the floor without whining… 😉  )

Anyway, when Jamie got in the car after practice, he told me a story:  in the locker room after the practice had ended, the coaches announced that they had chosen three captains for the team.  The most senior coach was the one who did the talking, and he said that they had chosen these captains based on the players’ work ethic, listening ability, and leadership qualities.  Then Jamie told me that he was one of the three chosen! I was shocked! I mean, he’s brand new to these coaches, and he’s also younger than most of the kids on the team.  Not to mention, he missed the first 2 practices due to church camp, and then he was 20 minutes late for yesterday’s. But clearly, he’s made an impression on them in the short time they’ve been around him.   As you can imagine, I’m very proud of my boy. After the struggles of the last couple of months, it’s nice to see that there are coaches who realize that while he may not be the most skilled players, he has a lot of great qualities that make him a good addition to a team.  🙂

So, things are looking up a bit here in our world.  Hope everyone else is having a great week–thanks so much for reading!

4 thoughts on “Tea Time!

    1. steph Post author

      That’s funny–I’m not a tea drinker, either, but that hibiscus tea was SO yummy! I would have it again!

      Thanks for the nice words and for taking the time to stop by!

      Reply
  1. Meg B

    The tea looks LOVELY! I will have to try that sometime. And down is better than up for weight right?

    As for Jamie, that is AWESOME! I know you have mentioned before that he’s got the drive and the heart but it’s hard because he’s smaller than some kids, etc. So, so happy he was recognized for who he is inside!

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      Maybe next summer we can arrange to do lunch with tea!! It’s halfway between us both, right? 🙂

      Thank you for the nice words about Jamie…as a future hockey mom (and wife to a hockey player), I know you “get” it. Thank you!!

      Reply

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