This and That

January is almost over and I forgot to write about Pantone's 2025 Color of the Year, Mocha Mousse. Do you have anything that color... clothing, dishware, linens or bedding, upholstered furniture, draperies, accessory pillows, or a room in your home?

I think one wall in my bathroom might be pretty close to the Pantone Color of the Year.

I belong to a Facebook group called Christian Tea Time & Hospitality.   A week ago a member of the group posted pictures of her sizeable tea library.  What fun looking at her books to see if any were in my collection.  Turns out I had 36 of hers.  I've been growing my tea library since 1998 [when I first became smitten by tea] and over those 27 years I've accumulated just over 300 tea books.  I haven't bought any in awhile because I ran out of room to put them.   These pics are before I removed all of them to organize.  

I decided to organize all my books by subject and/or author, and then photograph them so I'd have a record.  What a job!!!  I had six duplicates which I gave to two other tea lovers.

Photo of bookcase after it was organized.

Wouldn't it be fun if there was a library filled with just tea books?  Imagine how many tea books have been written over the years.

I recently read that readers live on average two years longer than non-readers.

On another subject... I'm having some ladies over for a tea luncheon this Tuesday, so I've been working on my tablescape and menu.  I'm going with a Valentine's theme.  I found a heart-shaped stoneware platter with matching dessert dishes [sets of 4] at Aldi's yesterday and wanted to share them with you in case you have an Aldi's near you.  They were very reasonably priced - $29.97 for everything plus tax.

And these cute chargers at Hobby Lobby - 40% off - $2.39 each.

We finally took all our lighted tea houses down from the top of the family room bookcases and packed them away, as well as taking our 9-ft. Christmas tree down.  If it weren't for company coming I probably would have left it up a little longer as we really enjoyed its ambiance.  I was late getting it decorated so it didn't seem like we had that long to enjoy it [although a little over a month should be long enough ;-)].

I used to decorate a 3-ft. artificial tree for all the holidays when the grandchildren were younger, and I toyed with the idea of getting it out to decorate for Valentine's Day this year, but it probably won't happen.

In between shopping, my tea book project and dismantling Christmas decorations, I've been continuing my soup making - today was pot #9 - Tortilla Soup - so good!  

I'll close with another cute tea graphic that came through my Facebook feed recently.