My Favorite Christmas Traditions!

If you’ve followed along with Tea Thoughts, you’ll know that I’m a Christmas lover! Christmas has special meaning to me, more for the connection and festivities that come with it. I wrote more about what Christmas means to me here.

There are so many things I love about the holiday season and lead up to Christmas so I’m going to share them all with you!

I would also like it to be known that I’m one of the only people in my family who has had this obsession with Christmas but over the years have pulled friends and family over to my side. Evil Cackle

1. Christmas Movies: I start watching christmas movies in November! In November, I will mostly watch the corny, hallmark type romantic ones and leave my favorite ones for December. Even the corny movies, are always feel-good. They’re a little bit of happiness and always share the magic of the season. My all time favorite movie is The Grinch with Jim Carey. I also love Polar Express, Max Fleisher Christmas Cartoons, A Christmas Carol and in recent years, the new movie Klaus. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many others that I love but those are my top favs.

2. Christmas Music: I know this is something that people are very on the fence about. How annoying it is that it’s played everywhere and how it’s played “too early”. I totally understand people’s differences on this subject, but for me personally, it’s the same as the movies. The songs are usually very cheery and put a little pep in my step. I don’t always relate to the ones with religious themes but usually they’re still nice to listen to. My favorite person to hear sing Christmas songs is hands down, Nat King Cole!

3. Christmas Tree: One of my absolute favorite things to do is to go to a local Christmas tree lot to pick a tree and decorate it! It’s always so beautiful to see them in person and be able to touch the branches. Many times, this is a great way to support a local or small farm as well. Bringing the tree home, strapped to the top of the car is always an adventure. Bringing it up and adding lights and ornaments is possibly my favorite part. I have so many ornaments that I’ve had since my childhood/young adulthood and remember fondly my family members who gifted them to me or where I purchased them. Getting to plug in the tree in the evening and in the morning before the sun rises brings me so much joy.

4. Baking: If you’ve never explored the recipes on my blog you may not know this but I love to bake and cook! Baking is something I’m especially fond of for the holiday season. Our family has a few favorite cookie recipes and decorating sugar cookies is one of my favorite activities! I also bake to gift! It’s so much fun baking a bunch of cookies and gifting them to people because what’s a better gift than a yummy treat you can eat?!

5. Wrapping Gifts: Buying and making presents is fun but my favorite is definitely the wrapping part. Every year, I search for a penguin wrapping paper and fun ribbon to use. This year I found this beautiful penguin wrapping paper with embossed snowflakes! I also Purchased this fun ribbon that is in the shapes of trees, snowflakes and ho ho ho. When I was younger, I always wanted to volunteer with those gift wrappers in the mall, I thought that was the best job ever.

6. Christmas Cards: As a snail mail lover, it’s probably no surprise that I love sending out Christmas cards. I love to create a card with a nice photo of my partner and I or multiple photos of him and I. Even when I was younger, I used to take some sort of christmas themed photo and send it to relatives! Even if it’s not feasible to send gifts to every member of my family because of how big it is, I can send them a card to let them know that I’m thinking about them, that I love them and that I miss them. I love to hand write all the addresses and in the past I’ve purchased vintage stamps in bulk and had fun creating collages on the envelopes with them!

7. Christmas lights: In the last few years, these outings have happened a little less because of COVID but hopefully that will change this year! Around the DC/MD area, there are a lot of great places to see lights beyond neighbors! It’s so beautiful to see the types of displays people come up with.

8. Sausage Bread: I saved the best for last! I admittedly hesitated on sharing this one because I view it as a family secret but I got permission from my sister to share :D Many Christmases ago, my sister and brother in law made us sausage bread on Christmas morning. This is a recipe from my brother in law’s family. Without giving away too much of the secret, sausage bread is exactly what it sounds like and the most delicious treat especially on Christmas morning. We became obsessed to the point where Christmas morning isn’t complete without sausage bread. I have even asked for it as a gift on my birthday which is shortly after Christmas. The warm and hearty meal is the perfect thing on Christmas morning. My sister and brother in law always have a beautiful spread of other food things, tea, coffee, hot cocoa and some of us even like to indulge in a bailey’s and jameson drink. Next to the Christmas tree, gathering together on Christmas morning and enjoying sausage bread (veggie sausage for mom!) is my favorite Christmas tradition. I don’t think Christmas would be the same without it!

If you also celebrate/love Christmas, let me know what your favorite parts are!

All about the Winter/Advent Countdown Box!

It’s that time of year! The box that started it all is back! If you don’t know the story, in 2019, I was searching for an advent calendar that had non blended or non flavored teas and wasn’t finding any good options. I decided to create my own! I offered 15 boxes of a 12 day countdown and did not know what was about to be sparked. After getting good feedback, I realized that I had something good going and thought, why can’t there by countdowns at other time of the year? Since that first box, I’ve created boxes for valentine’s day, halloween and the seasons! Most recently, I’ve landed on the seasons because this allows me enough time between boxes to research, curate, source and prepare the boxes.

These boxes are certainly a labor of love as I complete all the above steps on my own, including wrapping each day for each box and writing a note that is sealed with a wax seal!

I enjoy creating all these boxes and I think they’re unique because of the way that I wrap them but also because I don’t think anyone else is doing this style of box at other times of the year.

The winter/advent box is special to me though and here’s why. Christmas has always been special to me, not for religious reasons though. While I’ve experienced many religions and attended service for them, I wouldn’t consider myself religious and this is not the tie that I have to Christmas.

As many families, we celebrated the more commercial aspects of Christmas. Being a child of immigrants though, Christmas was one of the times where I didn’t feel like a total outcast among my classmates. It was something we could share culturally. This was really important to me growing up when I was often confused as to why there weren’t other children like me in my classes or school

The other important aspect for me showed up as I got older. As my family fractured when I was younger and then I ended up with a “blended” family (I think that’s the term), the holidays, not just Christmas were a bit hectic. Usually it centered around who would spend which holiday with which parent/family and at what location. This was always stressful but when it came to christmas, I dove headfirst into the festivities as a way to cope and bring out joy at a time when I needed it. I love making gifts, buying gifts, decorating, baking, cooking and watching christmas movies. Over the years, our family has created several traditions around christmas that I hold very dear. Now, as an older adult, this time of year signifies joy. It doesn’t matter what else is going on, I can always count on the time leading up to christmas as a time to spend time nurturing myself and healing. I do this through this traditions that bring me joy. I don’t think I’ve ever expressed this in this way so I wanted to share.

With all that being said, I understand that not everyone celebrates either because it is not a symbol of joy or that their cultures or religions have different celebrations. Over the years, I’ve tried to make my box more inclusive so that everyone can enjoy it because at the end of the day, the thing that is most important to me, especially at this item of year is to spread joy.

I’m excited to share that the packaging this year will be a mostly penguin themed (I LOVE PENGUINS!) and a few other things in the box will be the winter window design that you’ve seen on the previews of my puzzles.

The penguin design started as an ornament design, which will hit the shop a little later. You will see a few variations on it depending on where it’s printed. The original design can be seen on the wrapping above. The penguin is surrounded by snow and holding a gaiwan and cup adorned with a fish!

Below you can see a preview of the box that the countdown will come in. I had to change the design to make sure it is printed well. A while back I switched from the white boxes to the kraft ones for a few reasons. The kraft boxes are a little more budget friendly and I’m not as concerned about not wrapping them which saves me a lot of time when I am packaging 50+ boxes by myself. The drawback is that colors are a bit tougher on kraft, the greens and oranges of my fall box were perfect but this was harder. Additionally, the printing company doesn’t use white ink so anything in your design that is white would be blank. To counter this, I too away the ice at the bottom of the design and turned the balls of snow into blue snowflakes!

I also did a variation of the box design below for the packaging tape that will decorate the box of the teaware in the box and the outside of the box to close it.

BOX DETAILS

Just like in previous years, this box has been a bit of a roller coaster. I’m not sure why but all the other seasonal boxes run pretty smooth. I always have issues with the winter countdown! I had an issue with a vendor that fell out of contact which forced me to find replacements and kind of mess up my budget. But then they got back to me with the tea on the way so I also had to spend for those. What this means is that I’ve shared a few previews of the countdown box in the newsletter but I’ve had to change a few things. Below are the details for the box that I don’t expect to change since I have the tea issue sorted out now.

• Price: $75 (Retail: $170)

• RELEASE DATE: October 11th at 11am est. This will be sort of like a pre-order because it will likely take me a few weeks to send out all the boxes.

• 13 days of items to open: I will be doing a QR code again so that I can write more about each tea and item. There, I will lay out an unboxing plan of when to start if you want to countdown to christmas or if you want to countdown to the first day of winter!

• 2 stationery items

• 1 brewing vessel

• 1 tea accessory

• Around 150 grams of tea or 5.3 ounces. Samples range from 10grams to 28grams

  • Typed of tea: 4 oolongs, 2 black, 1 green, 1 white, 1 pu’er. One tea is flavored but does not have other ingredients in it that would cause allergy. If you are concerned, please feel free to reach out before purchasing and I can give you more details about it.

SHIPPING

I have gone back and forth about this and have finally decided on what to do for shipping this year. This box will be heavier because of more items and also the teaware. Shipping in the us will be a flat $3 regardless of where you are located. Please note that for this box, shipping rates I will pay will be from $8.46 to $12.66 depending on location. I will also be trying something new for Canada as well where I will be charging a flat $15 shipping rate where the true shipping rate would be somewhere around $21. I hope that this will make the box more accessible!

Something new for this round is that this box must be purchased ALONE. No other items can be added to your order. If you want another item, you will need to place a separate order. This is because I am already going to be losing on shipping and there will be no room to add other items. Even if you want one pin, I need you place a separate order. If you put other items in the order, I will need to send it separate and I will send an invoice for additional shipping. Shipping really kills a business of my size and I try to make it fair without highly inflating my prices to give the illusion of free shipping. Please know that If I’m to survive as a business I will need to enforce things like this when I’ve been lax about it in the past.
I appreciate your support and understanding!

Christmas Traditions - Tea Infused Eggnog

It’s no surprise that Christmas time is one of my favorite times of the year! I know that it can be stressful for a lot of people for many different reasons and because of this, the “holly jolly” attitude can be off putting. Like for so many, this season is tough in it’s own way. I shared before that for whatever reason, in recent years and even when I was a child, so many of my loved ones who passed away did so in the November to December time frame. My way of coping and honoring their memories is to be jolly during this season. It helps me through and I think it’s what they would have wanted!

The actual day of Christmas has always been the most stressful due to trying to please everyone with how much time is spent with what part of the family. Some of my favorite parts about Christmas are all the fun things I get to do leading up to the day!

In no particular order, here are some of my favorites that are probably on your list too!

• Picking out a Christmas tree and decorating it

• Watching all my favorite Christmas movies

• Wrapping Gifts

• Christmas Baking

• Going to see Christmas light displays

• Opening my homemade tea advent calendar

• Christmas Morning Sausage bread + baileys & Jameson!

Some of these traditions intersect with tea besides the tea advent calendar!

I’ve always known eggnog as a Christmas tradition but it was never something that we had in our house. I didn’t grow up drinking it and the few times I’ve had a sip, I always thought it was too sweet! This year though, I thought I would try tea infused eggnog!

After searching through lots of eggnog recipes, I decided to cut the stress and get some store bought eggnog. Every week, I get a produce box called The Imperfect Box. Last week they offered an almond milk eggnog so I grabbed it!

I decided to do an experiment and infuse tea into this eggnog but I wanted to use whatever tea that my tea advent calendar would give me.

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The recipe is simple:

• Heat your eggnog. I wanted until it started to boil. While it was getting to a boil, I noticed a little separation, this might have been because it’s almond milk but I’m not sure. So I stirred it until it was together again

• I then took the eggnog off the stove and poured it into a glass teapot. You could also keep the eggnog in the saucepan.

• I dumped in the tea I was using, stirred it around and then let it infuse for 10 minutes.

• I strained the tea and tasted it!

• It was definitely still very sweet but I noticed that the tea made it more robust in taste and aroma and definitely cut the sweetness!

A few notes about this experiment.

I used the tea that was in my advent calendar for days 19 and 20. These both happened to be raw pu’er teas. I don’t think that these were necessarily the best teas to infuse into eggnog but I went with the flow! Here are some other options that I would have gone with first if I wasn’t doing an experiment.

• My Morning Tea: I drink a ceylon tea every morning and I think this would be so delicious in the eggnog. I never drink this tea with milk but I do often sweeten it with honey so the sweetness of the eggnog might be a good replacement!

• Masala Chai: I could totally see this being an excellent substitute for milk when making stovetop chai! Instead of starting off with water and adding in the tea then milk, I would just bring the eggnog to a boil then add in the tea. Definitely let the flavors infuse for several minutes and then strain! This is also a tea that I would usually sweeten a little so the eggnog provides the whole package here

• Black Tea Blends: I have a feeling most black tea blends would taste good with eggnog as well. I don’t think everything would be suitable but Imagine a blend that has some spices in it or maybe even your favorite fruit!

• Oolong: The eggnog has such a powerful flavor, I don’t think any oolong would work. Specifically, I think a roasted oolong would be best. I originally wanted to use some da hong pao I had but looked in my stash and saw that I was out :D I think a nice yancha would also be so good. The roasted flavor would definitely compliment and also lessen the sweetness!

Alternate method for infusion: The above recipe calls for enjoying the eggnog hot/warm. If you like to enjoy it cold you can either allow it to cool or try cold brewing! I cold brewed tea into milk before and you can use a similar method to cold brewing tea. When choosing your tea, I like to rinse it with warm water to open them up a little before placing it in my liquid. I would probably place the eggnog with the unbrewed tea leaves into it at night before bed and then take it out about 12 hours later to strain and enjoy!