Enchanted Teas with Dahlia

I was so excited last Christmas when my aunt surprised me with a year long subscription to Sips by ! It's an amazing company that puts together boxes of teas to send directly to your home, personalized with your taste in mind. Since I had such a great experience, I thought I'd share some of the information in case anyone is looking for clever gift ideas for the tea lovers in their lives! When I started it at the end of last year, I was prompted to fill out a little questionnaire on their website so that they could get a sense of the types of teas I like and dislike. They used that information to help determine what to include in my boxes. I was pretty open minded when answering the questions, so I ended up with a wide variety of options. That is exactly what I wanted because it gave me the chance to try teas that I might not have normally purchased myself! Below is a glimpse of what the boxes and their contents look like: Each box came with 4 different kinds of teas to enjoy an...

  My latest tea party was frightfully delightful! I asked my friends if there was a theme they would like for my next tea party and they chose 'spooky'. Since it was still summer at the time, I was careful to not include specifically Halloween/fall time details such as pumpkins. Another one of my goals was to make this event feel eerie and dark, while still maintaining a tea party-esque atmosphere, adding touches of elegance amongst the gore! I set the table with these cut-out sugar cookies that are made to look like decapitated people. (Yikes, maybe I should have put a trigger warning at the top of this post?) I used a Christmas gingerbread man cookie cutter, sliced off the heads before baking, and then added some red icing after they cooled to look like blood. For the second dessert idea, I made red velvet cupcakes and decorated them with dyed pink buttercream frosting to look like brains! My favorite of all the food I served were the "finger sandwiches"! (Get it? S...

This weekend I put together an Asian inspired tea party and it turned out so cute, I simply had to share! These beautiful chop sticks, place mats, and tea set were all given to me by my friend Sandy D'Angelo, so of course I had to put together a special tea party with them! In addition, I decorated the table with a bamboo runner and a gorgeous orchid for the centerpiece! For the tea, I chose Blackberry Jasmine Oolong Tea by Revolution Tea . I had been wanting to try it out since I received some samples in one of my Sips By boxes earlier this year. I decided that I wanted to use one of my "flowering" teas as well, so I broke out another tea pot - the one that goes with my Celebration Flowering Tea Set by Tea Bloom ! (Take a look at my blog post  and  video , both from a while back, all about this unique tea set if you'd like to know more about what it includes and how it's used, etc...) For the food, I served stir-fry with shrimp, rice, and mixed veg...