Sunday Routine

It's a gorgeous day over here in Belgie! The birds are singing, the breeze is nice and there's little beetle bugs flipped on their backs. I suppose their trying to work on their tans since I've found a handfull of them so far (about the size of my thumbs) stuck on their backs with their feet flailing around. I did my good deed and turned several of 'em over to send them on their merry way, while others flipped right back over. Oh well, can't say I didn't try!

Anyway, Eric's outside barbequing all of our goodies for the upcoming week. 

I don't think people realize how much we actually cook when it comes to pre-making our meals. I mean, I eat between 2-3oz of chicken/ pork lion every two hours while Eric eats 4-5oz every two to three hours of steak, pork loin and schwank. Lots and lots of meat. So when you see all of it laid out at the same time, it makes you think "OH my gosh, that's a ton of food!". 

So, as he's doing his thing with the meat, I figured I'd do my thing and make some tea. Hard work, right? I have my spiffy new teapot that I picked up in Poland in addition to the Bavarian tea I picked up yesterday, so might as well brew some tea to enjoy!

The reusable tea bag that I picked up works really well, even though it looks like a sock with a wire through it. It fits over the lip of the top and even allows for the lid to fit back on. That way, I can just seal everything together and let it sit and brew.

MMMMMMM! Strawberries and Kiwi! Eric said it looked like hot koolaid because it turned out to be a hot red color when it was all done.

I gotta say, the warmer you use works REALLY well! I've been drinking my tea on and off throughout the day and when I go back to the teapot to get more, it's still pipin' hot! Love it! 

My husband is rather "metro" ...well..when it comes to cooking, baking, and anything that involves the kitchen. So, when he saw me making tea, he told me," When we go to Poland, I want a manly teapot."..lol! Ok! No problem! He and I usually take time out in the morning and have some quite time and tea together before the mayhem begins, so I think it's cute that he wants his own teapot.

Now, where's my tea biscuits?

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I'm a lil' ....

Teapot!

 Actually, I should say Teapots..

The other day when Dad and I were waiting for our train to London from Saxmundham, I was looking at the different travel brochures they had for the local area. One of ‘em caught my eye considering I’ve been on the hunt for a rather unique little teapot. As of late, I’ve been focusing a lot more on tea rather than coffee since I really can’t tolerate caffeine very well anymore. Even when I have just a little coffee or soda, I get raging headaches that make me miserable for days on end. Not to mention, it’s nice to sit down with Eric and relax with some tea…we’re pretty silly about the whole process when we have our “tea time”, but, it’s OUR tea time. I convinced Dad that we could go check it out considering I’ve taken him to a lot of the places that he’s been wanting to go to, so it was my turn to finally check a place out that I was interested in.

Anyway, the place we went to was called “ Carters Teapots” ( http://www.cartersteapots.com/ ) and it was about forty five minutes from Aldeburgh (where we were staying). England kinda freaks me out from time to time considering the landscape is so pretty with the lush, rolling hills and such….but the roads are garbage. Narrow little roads that weave in and out of forrest area’s, blind turns that barely allow a small car to pass by one another…nevermind the fact that lorries and SUV’s haul ass down those same roads. Meh…anyway, thirty minutes of the drive was dealing with scary close calls or people driving like jackasses. Not exactly a nice, peaceful drive like one would imagine going through the British countryside.

We arrived at the lil shop and, well, it was smaller than I had anticipated. Just by going off of the brochure, I was imagining a place a little on the…uhhh…grander scale considering when you’re making your own ceramics, you need room for all the molds, the kiln and such.

 When you walk in, there’s a little display room with different unique little mini ( one cup ) teapots for sale, then when you walk around a lil more, you find the larger pieces that hold more liquid. They had all types of different styles! Piano’s, boxes of chocolate, race cars, even wedding cakes and cats sleeping in baskets… talk about conversation pieces!

 Dad actually ended up getting himself an old fashion racer teapot, although I’m surprised he didn’t get himself a lil airplane considering that’s his “thing”. While poking around, he found a teapot that screamed “Erika”:

Rather fitting for me considering I just happened to have my leopard print purse with me, lol.

I remember reading on the brochure that you’re able to actually paint your own teapot, which was the main reason why we went over there in the first place. To be honest, I was a little disappointed since they didn’t really clarify what type of teapot you can paint, or, lack there of. All there really was to choose from were little knick knack style ceramics or there was a little piggy bank to choose from. I was hoping to paint a purse, typewriter, or hell, even a cupcake teapot. Nope, nope nope… not possible. The “raw” pieces they had in the back were for larger company orders and weren’t available for people to paint…kinda sucky.

Items to paint:

Things we couldn't paint, lol

Dad tried his damnest to buy a “raw” racecar because he was really wanting to customize & pimp it out to his “specs”, lol…but still, no dice for Dad. We ended up getting the leopard purse, a racecar as well as a mini cupcake teapot..put the goodies into the Xterra and went back for some tea (hey, what’s a teapot shop without tea?). While the gal was getting our order ready, I poked around the shop a lil more and found a type writer teapot..VERY cute! Dad said I should get it considering I like to write…errr…type a lot. He even got me a Snoopy with him sitting ontop of his lil red house, hammering away on his type writer. When I looked up their website earlier in the day, I saw that they were wanting 89p..all the while, they were asking 29p in the store. It’s considered a “Second”, which means there’s something wrong with it, lol. The only thing I could really see wrong with it is the inside of the lid (the removeable part where the paper is), had a lil crack. Other than that, there was nothing wrong with it! Hell, saving almost 60 pounds..I’m ok with that! The gal told me it could only really be used for decoration due to the crack, which, once again, I’m totally “ok” with considering I was going to use it for decoration anyway in my office, lol.

I just realized…. Whenever I go some where, I usually buy a stein or something to signify the place I visited. Since I can’t really think of anything “stein” worthy in England (I looked and didn’t find one), I think a teapot pretty much sums up England. Ya know? Think about it…what do the Brits usually do? Tea time! Now whenever I look at my funky teapots (that actually say “Made in England” rather than “Made in China”), I’ll think of England :)

Here's all of our goodies:

Dads race car

Eric's cup cake

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