Preparing For The Tea Show!

Oh how I love autumn! I really do, I think I've said this in at least three posts :o) This last weekend was my dear mum's birthday, we spent it together at my brothers house up in the mountains. Maybe I've just never paid attention, but this year the weather seems very strange, as if someone noticed the date, and said "oops, time to change the seasons" and as simply as changing the page on a calender, switched the weather from summer to fall. Last week it was 103 degrees where I live. This week it hasn't reached the 80's... But I digress, the point of this little ramble was to show you this picture. Isn't it beautiful? This is the view that I woke up to on Sunday morning. It had snowed/slushed the night before while we were outside celebrating Mom's birthday with a bon fire, this is what the next morning left behind. This is the view from the kitchen, looking... east? My brother lives on a mountain crest with a valley on three sides, it gets confusing... I think this is east. Yes, east. The sun rises in their kitchen and sets in the living room (that's how I remember things, bizarre, I know). They have a deck that wraps around the east, south & west sides of the house, it's gorgeous I tell you. Gorgeous.

On with the post!

I'm participating a tea tasting at a fall boutique/open house this weekend, in Elk Grove. If anyone would like to come, please feel free! Hello...? Any readers from Elk Grove, CA? No? Dang. I'm also doing a craft faire later in the month in Stockton, CA. These are bigger, and will have lots more people than your average home party, so I wanted a way that I can quickly and neatly sort my teas back together by variety as people browse & sniff their way through my collection until their hearts are content and they find themselves lots of yummy teas! The way I decided to do that was to make banners/runners that represent the colors of the variety of teas that I sell for Let's Do Tea. These are the fabrics I chose. I started with the large piece at the bottom/front. It's so pretty and has so many colors that fit perfectly with what I wanted to do. This fabric inspired all my other choices.

See like this? Going left to right, there are:

• Herb & Fruit Teas in RED
• White & Special-teas in YELLOW
• Green Teas in GREEN
• Black Teas in BLUE
• and Rooibos Teas in PURPLE

I only used 1/2 a yard of fabric for each, I was militant about the measuring & pinning. Each runner is exactly 16" wide and 40" long. I used an iron-on fuseable interfacing too, so that the runners are a little more stiff. I sewed a button at the triangular point of each runner, then hung a small tassel over each button. This way I can throw these runners in the washer & dryer without damaging the pretty tassel. Nice huh? Isn't that little set cute? It's tiny!!

I also make a little sign to go in front of each variety of tea, so that people can easily identify what they're looking at. I have about 70 varie-teas (hehe) of tea in my collection. I have some definite favorites, but I haven't found any that I do not like.

I also made a simple sign to showcase our Fall Seasonal Teas. Did you know that Let's Do Tea releases a set of seasonal teas four times a year? Pretty cool, huh? The fall teas this year are outstanding, they are all black teas and they are Toffee Cream, Figgy Pudding and Peppermint Bark. Oh-my-gosh, they're good!

This is pretty close to what my display will look like, only I didn't put out all the wonderful teapots and accouterments that Let's Do Tea sells since I was only taking pictures so that I could plan in my mind how I'm going to set up. Also, I don't have the tasting station set up. I'll have four pots of tea going at all times during the party so people can actually try the teas for themselves. Sounds like fun, no? Are you suuure you can't make it to Elk Grove this weekend? Hmmm?

I'll make sure to take lots of pictures on Saturday. I'm hoping to sell lots of tea, winter is coming and people need a good cuppa! I'm not really a good sales person and thankfully I don't need to be! I just really love tea, and these teas are tea-rrific and speak for themselves. I'm a little nervous, I haven't done a tea tasting on this scale before, so please wish me luck!!

I gotta go make tea samples now, toodle-doo!

~Lisa