Enchanted Teas with Dahlia

This week I got to try a new tea room that I had ever been to before. It's a family owned business that just opened in August not too far from where I live in a town called Celebration. It is such a lovely place and I already can’t wait to go back again! Something that makes this location truly unique is its "tea bar" where you can try their signature tea snow, homemade iced teas, and exclusive tea smoothies! They also have a private room decorated like the Mad Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland (which I don't have a photo of - maybe next time)! However, I was seated in the regular dining room which was absolutely lovely as well! The atmosphere was elegant, yet relaxed and the staff was very accommodating and patient with all of my questions! There was also a little gift shop near the entrance with lots of merchandise that would make fun souvenirs to commemorate your experience.  My friend and I were totally overwhelmed (in a good way!) with how many m...

Have you ever wondered the difference between afternoon tea and high tea? While reading about their origins, I learned that in the 1700's afternoon tea, also known as 'low tea', was traditionally served by the upper class at 4:00pm to bridge the gap between the only two meals of the day (at that time), breakfast in the morning and dinner that was often consumed as late as 8:00pm. It became a social event serving tea and finger sandwiches in the parlor relaxing in low, comfortable chairs. Similarly, the working class loved to indulge with a satisfying pot of tea, but after working a full day, they did so while partaking of a hearty meal around 6:00pm. This meal was eaten at a table in high back dining chairs, hence the name. It was so wonderful having my family visit us in Florida last month! I threw an autumn themed high tea party for them on the last day of their trip with a lot of help from my mom and both of my grandmas! I would love to share with you some of th...

This week I decided to try making my own blend of tea to give as gifts to friends! I wanted it to consist of lots of fall flavors, so today I'll share what I came up with! The measurements for the ingredients are not really important, it's up to you to use your best judgement in deciding how much of each you would like to add if you try this recipe out! Ingredients: Loose leaf tea Vanilla extract Cinnamon sticks An apple Lemon juice Craisins Rose petals Directions: 1. I started out putting my loose leaf tea in a shallow container, stirred in vanilla extract until all leaves were just moistened, and set the mixture aside to allow the vanilla flavor to set into the tea leaves. 2. Meanwhile, I put the cinnamon sticks into a zip lock bag and let out all the air before sealing. I used a hammer to gently crush up the sticks into smaller pieces within the bag. 3. Next I cut the apple into very thin slices and soaked them in a mixture of water and lemon juice for...

Happy first day of October! I'm sure you're just as happy as I am about the Autumn months! I wanted to celebrate the beginning of fall with a cozy evening at home and a hot cup of tea! I decided to make one kind I've read about, but never actually tried before called a London Fog Tea Latte. This drink was originated in Vancouver, Canada where it's generally a foggy, rainy climate. This type of weather is said to have helped inspire the development of this beverage according to Tasting Table's website which you can check out here ! I got the recipe from Plains Joy's website and elaborated on it a little bit. Below is my edited version... Ingredients: about 1 tablespoon Earl Grey loose tea leaves 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 cup boiling water 3/4 cup whole milk Directions: 1. Fill a tea strainer with the tea leaves. 2. Put tea strainer, sugar, and vanilla in your tea cup. 3. Pour boiling water over the mixture. 4. Al...

My sister and I enjoying Homemade Lemon Bars & Blueberry Black Tea after Hurricane Irma. Find out what's so significant about this... Last week was extremely intense because a very strong hurricane hit Florida where my family and I live! Thankfully we're all okay and we only got a small amount of damage to our home; broken fence, missing screens, lost shingles, but the thing I was the most upset about... all of the unripe ponderosa lemons being blown off of our tree! ;) I had been anxiously waiting all year for them to be ready for picking! A ponderosa lemon is a hybrid of a regular lemon and another type of citrus fruit called a citron. You can read more about them here ! One of the ponderosa lemons that fell off of our tree compared to a regular lemon. Since I really had my heart set on making lemon bars with the juice from the ponderosa lemons, I decided to see what I could get out of them even though they fell off too early. Out of all of them I probab...

Happy September! I've already been thinking ahead for an autumn themed high tea party I am going to be hosting later this season. First things first, invitations! This was the perfect excuse for my mom and I to have a craft night together this weekend! We decided that we would each get to come up with a design for the invitations! However, we wanted them to be mostly similar to each other (in color and style), yet not exactly the same! Meaning we could use different prints, or arrange the embellishments differently, etc... My mom and I each chose a paper with similar, warm, fall colors and then two solid colored pieces of card stock to accent the prints. A lot of the embellishments that we used were already in our craft supplies. That's one thing I really love.. coming up with ways to use what you have in order to create something you are envisioning! We started out by sizing, cutting, and layering our papers. We both used one of our pieces of solid color card sto...