Oh tiny tree ... I shall name you... Tim

There are certain advantages to growing up in the country as opposed to the city. We always had a real tree in the living room for christmas. My dad would split wood for fires in the fireplace. My mom who, as I've mentioned before, is amazing and would do massive amounts of baking. Enough pfeffernusse cookies to feed an army, rumballs that would probably get you into trouble if you were driving later, and amazing gingerbread houses with stained glass candy windows and broken after eight chocolates for shingles with the filling oozing out to look like icecicles. And this is before she'd make Christmas dinner pretty much single handed.

 I really want to carry on as many of my families holiday traditions as I can but I'm also coming to terms with the limitations of our one bedroom apartment. So sadly our tree is fake and about three feet tall but it is chock-a-block with my and my husbands ornaments. I also  intend to fully test the capacity of our tiny little galley kitchen and bake a truly epic number of cookies to give out as presents this year. So now that it's finally snowed I can really start getting into the holiday spirit.

Getting older is mandatory. Growing up is optional

Growing up I was often told that I was very mature for my age, to the point that I was once mistaken for being a freshman in collage when I was eleven. Now that I’m in my thirties, popular culture says that I should regret not embracing the magic of childhood and start denying my age. As far as telling people my age goes I’ve always preferred to defy rather than deny the number of years under my belt.  As for the loss of the magic of child hood… Who says I lost it? Being an adult means getting to do all the things kids aren’t allowed to do as well as what they can.  So with that in mind I’d love to go with my husband to Disneyland before I’m thirty five.

Because if Darth Vader can have a blast than so can we.

Travel Teabox

In spite of the fact that tea is gaining in popularity it's still very rare to find a restaurant with a descent selection of anything but generic tea bags that I could easily find at the grocery store. My husband,obviously sick of my sighs of disappointment after seeing lacklustre options when it came to an after dinner cuppa told me I should just start bringing my own tea to restaurants and just ordering pots of hot water instead.

Thus the travel tea box. I decorated an old jewellery box with layers of cut out and painted card-stock and ended up with a very serviceable container for several samples of my favorite loose-leaf teas.

Brew Me!

Brewed beverages are finicky things. Water temperature can drastically change the flavor of teas, tisanes and coffee. My kettle is a standard, push button for boiled water, type that I’ve had since my college days and I do try to take proper brewing temperatures into account but to be honest I mostly rely on rough guesstimation.

I’ve finally found a kettle that takes water temperature into account.  The Breville Variable Temperature Kettle. Sweet monkey lords, Want!