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"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful,
or believe to be beautiful."

~William Morris

This quotation has helped to define how I decorate and make our house a home. My favorite things are those that are both beautiful and useful.
As you look around your home, do you see things that are neither lovely, nor have a purpose? Those may be the things you no longer need. Of course, remember that some things are useful or beautiful to other members of your family, even if you do not find them particularly attractive. In other words, we should be respectful of others' tastes as well!
This idea has really helped me in getting rid of things that are just "stuff". It's very freeing. I've been thinking of ways to apply this idea to other areas of life as well, including how I spend my time. Am I spending time on something lovely or useful, or am I just wasting it on "stuff" that seems to accumulate?

Keeping the Sabbath

As I've been reading through the book Breathe with my Mops group, I've been thinking about the Sabbath. Yes, it is listed in the 10 Commandments, but the New Testament as says in Colossians 2:16-17 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. "

What does the Sabbath mean for a Christian? Are we to observe it by more than going to church? Shall it be as any other day to those in Christ? Should we celebrate it at all? Do we need that day of rest?
For a few years, Sweetheart and I chose not to spend money on the Sabbath. We went to church, but did not shop, or eat out on Sundays. Over time, that idea slipped away and it has become more like another Saturday, but with church in the mornings.
I'd like it to be different. Breathe definitely suggests that it should be so. I've been wondering; what does a day look like that is set aside for the Lord? Since I don't work outside the home, my days all look pretty much the same. It's nice that Sweetheart's home on Saturday & Sunday, but he's usually busy with projects and things he can't do during the week. Therefore, whatever I do I need to plan on just being for Pumpkin and I at this time.
I've decided to arrange the week so that I'm not doing chores on Sundays. I even put dinner in the Crockpot last Saturday. I also decided that I'd keep the computer off on Sundays. I think this is a good idea. I was reminded while on the computer checking my email that I was planning to keep the computer off. Oops! Later, I needed a recipe I only had on-line for something I wanted to make that evening. Hmm...
But what about baking for fun? What about working in the garden, if I enjoy it? I chose to still clean up after myself and do the dishes. It's strange.
I'd really like other ladies' ideas on this. Do you keep the Sabbath? What does that mean to you? What helps you to keep your focus on Him?

Yixing Teapots

Sweetheart emailed me a link to this site and their wonderful article on Yixing Teapots. I first discovered these beautiful teapots while living in China. They have so many wonderful shapes and designs and each is made by hand.

I tried to visit Yixing while I was there to see the teapots being made, but I couldn't figure the train schedule to make it work when I was in the area. I did, however, manage to backpack a set across the country and bring a second set of mini teapots home all in one piece!

Note: The typos/grammatical errors are direct from the site. Occasionally, Chinglish is difficult to understand. Here's some of the article:

How to use Yixing Teapot for tea?

Every zisha teapot has a strainer at end of spout, so you do not need to put the loose tea leaves inside a strainer. This prevent any kind of impurity introduced by the strainer. At end of day, after you finish drinking the last tea of the day, throw away the loose leaves, rinse off the teapot under clean water. Before you put in any loose tea leaves in the morning, always rinse the teapot with hot boiling water to warm up the teapot. Then add (1-2 tea spoon of) leaves to teapot. Infuse with hot water. The first two cups of tea has the most caffeiine (still only 10-25% of caffeine compare to coffee). Leave the leaves in the teapot. Whnever you want to drink more tea in the same day, just add hot water to the teapot. Do as often as you want. By end of the day, after a few repeated infusions, the tea already become naturally de-caffeinated. The most healthy way of drinking!

After you used the teapot, you will never need to wash with soap again. Just rinse off the tea leaves in the pot every time you use it.

What's Zisha Yixing Teapot?

• What's Purple Clay -- as westerners translates what Chinese referred to as: Purple Sand?
  

Is it a clay? Is it a sandy mud? It's not clay and it's not sandy mud. It's a special kind of rock which is mostly mineral deposits found under the ground near Yixing city. Nowadays the rock after it's mined are grounded by the machine with water, then it's filtered. The paste (just like the bean paste) is then used to make the teapots. This paste is called Zisha Sand, because it contains very fine sandy particles. It's all because of this special format of mineral paste that made Zisha Yixing teapot so famous and fine craftsmen's teapot are sold easily and well over 10,000 yuan in China.

• Why Yixing teapot makes the best tea?

1) Because the special zisha paste contains sandy particles. the teapot after it's fired has tiny tiny porous surface, the tea in the pot can breath. Tea left in the pot on hot days out of the refrigerator can be kept three days and still fresh.

2) When the teapot is being used everyday, the tea taste and tea oil soak into the teapot. This enhances the tea your are drinking. People believe Yixing teapot can make fine taste tea without any tea leaves, because the tea taste contained in the pot can just turn hot water into tea after the pot has been used long enough.

2) Zisha paste has no lead, unlike clay. Statistics in China shows the mineral deposits are very healthy for people who has high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It promotes longevity.

3) Zisha paste do not glaze under fire. So new teapots do not shine. But it's rich contents of minerals makes these teapot very unique and becomes one of the hottest ornamental collector's items for scholars. This is because the more the teapot is being used, the more beautiful the teapot becomes. The daily touching, rubbing, and making tea, makes the pot shinier and shinier everyday. Old teapot has very beautiful and fascinating patinas after used for some time.

• How to take care of a Yixing Teapot?

When you get a new Yixing teapot, most of the time, it did not touched any water yet. Because the maker or the seller usually want you to be able to tap out the crisp metallic sound. So you need to wash out or rinse thoroughly the Zisha bits in the teapot. If makes you feel better, you can wash with soap. If you will use the teapot to drink green tea, put a lot not so good green tea in the pot, add a lot of hot water and let it soak for a few hours. This will season the pot a little bit. I like to season the pot for hours by letting it sit on the stove for some time with low heat on.

After you used the teapot, you will never need to wash with soap again. Just rinse off the tea leaves in the pot every time you use it.

There are more pictures on the site, as well as more information, if you are interested. Now, go make yourself a cup of tea!

Birthday Roses

Sweetheart gave me these beautiful roses for my birthday.

I love how he captured them in the morning light, don't you?

Spring Reading Challenge

Spring Reading Challenge

"If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads
but what he rereads."
~Francois Mauriac

I love to read. I always have. Since my sister taught me to read before I ever started school, reading has been a part of my life. I read constantly. If a book is good enough I will reread it , sometimes many times. Several of these books are rereads. I seem to reread certain books seasonally. For example, The Secret Garden is a perfect book to read in Spring. I reread the Mitford series each Fall, and Little Women in the Winter. Some books I've reread so many times that I've completely lost count.

The Secret Garden and The Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Private World of Tasha Tudor and Springs of Joy by Tasha Tudor
Desiring God by John Piper
What Every Mom Needs by Elisa Morgan & Carol Kuykendall
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
*Deception by Randy Alcorn (to be published April 17th)
*Living Simply: Choosing Less in a World of More by Joanne Heim
*Taking Care of the Me in Mommy by Lisa Whelchel

***These three I need to buy.

Plus whatever random fiction stories & gardening books that catch my eye at the library...

What are you reading, or rereading as the case may be?

Pansies by Koyaanis Qatsi

35 Things About Me

I was over at Joanne's A Simple Wife where I discovered we have one more thing in common: we were both born on the "Ides of March" (the 15th). She posted 35 Things About Me. I think it's one for each year. Her list was fun to read. Since I turned 35 Thursday I thought I'd do the same. Here's my list:

1. I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I moved the month I graduated from high school.
2. I love to read.
3. I collect antique tea cups and tea pots and use them all the time.
4. I've been married for 8 1/2 years to my Sweetheart & best friend.
5. My favorite color is blue.
6. I love flowers.
7. I'm pregnant with Baby #2.
8. I love milk & ice cream when I'm pregnant.
9. We bought an ice cream machine last weekend.
10. I used to wear only red, black and white for years.
11. Now, I almost always wear black, white, or tan.
12. I've only ever had my ears pierced.
13. I love to bake.
14. I love old movies and new movies made of classic books.
15. I love buying journals, but never seem to write in them.
16. I love sitting on my porch.
17. I'm trying to learn how to be a better friend.
18. My first car was a truck my dad bought me after college. It was brown. Not a pretty sight.
19. I lived in China for a year.
20. I couldn't even say, "Hello!" in Chinese when I got there. ("Ni hao!")
21. I love eating with chopsticks.
22. I love "Anne of Green Gables".
23. I hope to travel to the United Kingdom soon.
24. I think being a Mom is wonderful, though I need to find some balance in my life.
25. I have the cutest son ever!
26. I hate ballpoint pens and would rather write with real ink. I miss fountain pens.
27. My major was Public & Interpersonal Communications with a minor in Biblical Studies.
28. I went back to school to become a teacher.
29. I'm looking forward to homeschooling.
30. I seem to develop insomnia when I'm pregnant, hence the reason I'm blogging at midnight...
31. We named our dog years before we ever got him. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to see Abner the Airedale.)
32. I can't knit, crochet, embroider, or do much of anything with a needle.
33. I've done Calligraphy since the fifth grade.
34. I want to write fiction for teens someday. There seems to be so little that's good for them to read for fun.
35. I'm glad I'm not a teenager; I've learned a lot in these 35 years.

Writing

I love C.S. Lewis' writings, even the ones I have to read again and again to grasp. I was fortunate in college to take an entire class on him. It was wonderful, challenging, humorous and sad by turns, but isn't that life in general?

Here are some of his thoughts on writing.

"Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago."

"What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page wither of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on."

"I am sure that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves: for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development. If the impulse to write survives the hope of success, then one is among these. If not, then the impulse was a best only pardonable vanity, and it will certainly disappear when the hope is withdrawn."

~from The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

Graphic: Courtesy of Allposters.com Pendent by Jean-Michel Labat

Just Curious About Your Opinon

I was invited again this week to a party. I would love to go to a party to hang out with friends, and meet new people, to visit together, laugh, and eat. Wouldn't you?

However this party wasn't really a party to me. I was invited to a party so that I could by stuff and someone else could get free stuff because I bought a lot of stuff. I am so sick of these things.

This particular party was a Tastefully Simple Party. Yes, like I need to spend $13 on bread mix when, I can make my own from scratch for $2. Or how about a soup mix for $8? Let's not forget to add tax and $7.95 for shipping! What a deal! I was also invited to bring friends and even my husband. Snort. If I don't even want to go, why would my husband, or any other guy?

"The food you love, the time you deserve" is their motto. Here's an idea, why don't I take the time I'd spend at the party and baked something fresh for my family myself?

These aren't parties, they are live infomercials!!! Can we just get together to spend time with one another? I know, "There's no pressure to buy anything. We'll just get together for fun." What? There is too pressure, a lot of pressure! We're not just getting together for fun. We're getting together so I can spend money to help you get free stuff.

I went to a Pampered Chef party in January. I did. It was the first one I'd gone to in over 10 years. Nothing has changed. We all stood around listening to the saleswoman give her pitch and then we were handed catalogs to shop. There was no time to visit with one another, like I had hoped for and there was definitely pressure to buy.

Why did I go? I was invited by someone who has been a friend to me for three years. In fact, she's been one of the only people I've stayed in contact with from my old job. She'd invited several others that I hadn't seen in awhile, so I thought it would be nice to see some old coworkers. Even if they had shown up, we'd have been really limited in our interactions because of the on-going commercial. Oh well. I think I can go at least another ten years without doing that again.

Besides just how yucky all this feels in general, I feel worse because even if I did want to go to some of these, our budget simply wouldn't allow it. I've told people before that I can't go because of the money. That's kind of hard to admit when everyone else seems to have to problem with it. But it all adds up. Think about it. Even if you hosted a party and got $50 in free products, won't you end up spending more over the next few months by reciprocating at all your guests own parties?

What happened to just getting together because we like one another? Why not just have a party for fun? Is this just a problem where I live?

Here's a major point of contention with me. I've been invited to seven of these parties in the last seven months. All the invitations have come via email and all seven women used my email from the list of the ministry I am serving in. Now, when the main directory was given out, everyone was told NOT to use it for soliciting the members. Good idea. But, how is this not soliciting? Everyone of these invitations is a solicitation.

I thought about mentioning this to the main coordinator, but she invited me to an Uppercase Living Party. How about the assistant coordinator? No, she used it to invite me to a jewelry party. What about the other leadership women? Not her; Southern Living and Uppercase Living. Her? No; Pampered Chef. Her? No, that won't work either (candle party). What about the person directly over me? Nope: Tastefully Simple. DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE A PROBLEM HERE??????????????????????

I'm the first one to wish I knew some of these ladies better. I wish I could develop stronger friendships. But to be honest, all these invitations feel less about wanting my company, as wanting my money. I don't feel like a valuable member of a ministry. I feel like my importance is directly related to my wallet. Why are we doing this to one another?

Toffee Recipe

I love this recipe. It's so easy to put together and tastes so good! It's a perfect tea time treat. I like to have just a bit of chocolate with the other sweets at a tea. Plus, since this can be made ahead, it's a nice treat to make the day before the tea. (Just be sure to hide it, so there's still some left!) I think I've also frozen it after cutting it into squares.

This is a recipe I've passed out before for large teas where each person is bringing in some of the food. It's something that would be hard to mess up.

I made a half-batch of this today in a 9"x9" glass baking pan. I cooked it the full 20 minutes. I probably should have baked it a few extra minutes, as it was pretty thick. No matter, it was still delicious! Apparently Sweetheart would agree as a number of pieces were missing when I got up from my nap...

Toffee Recipe:

2 sticks butter (1/2 lb)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 large package chocolate chips (12 oz.)
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 13x9 inch baking pan. Toast and chop the pecans and set aside.

2. Cream together butter and sugars on low speed. Add the egg yolk and vanilla. Beat well. Stir in the flour.

3. Spread this mixture into the baking pan. Bake 25 minutes. Remove from oven.

4. Sprinkle top with chocolate chips. Return pan to the oven for 3 minutes. Using a knife, spread the melted chocolate evenly across the surface of the pan. Sprinkle with the pecans. Cool completely and cut into squares. (Try not to eat the entire pan in one sitting.)

This recipe is from a wonderful book called Tea Time by Roni and Nancy Akmon. It's one of my favorite cookbooks for tea. The picture at the top of the post is the cover of the book. The cover illustration by Harrison Fisher is one of my absolute favorites!

Tea Sandwich Recipes

Cashew Chicken Salad Sandwiches

(This recipe makes 24 sandwiches.)

1 ½ cups of cooked chicken, finely chopped

½ cup cashews, finely chopped

6 tablespoons mayonnaise

salt and pepper to taste

12 slices of white sandwich bread

½ stick melted butter

Mix together the chicken, cashews, and mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread melted butter on each slice of bread. (A pastry bush or new paint brush works well for this.) Divide the salad onto 6 of the slices. Top with the remaining slices, pressing down gently. Finally, cut off the crusts and cut each sandwich into four sections.

*

Tomato Provencal Sandwiches

(This recipe makes about 24 sandwiches.)

24 slices of white sandwich bread

4 or 5 Roma/Italian Tomatoes sliced into 6 slices each

1 cup mayonnaise

1 Tbs Dried Herbs (Herbs de Provence work, as do any assortment you may have. Or just mix some dried basil, thyme, oregano, & whatever else you have together.)

fresh dill for garnish, if available

Mix the herbs with the mayonnaise. Using a round cookie cutter cut a circle out of the center of each slice of bread. Try to use a cutter about the same size or larger than the tomato slices. Spread the mayonnaise of each slice of bread. Top with one tomato slice. Add fresh dill for garnish. (These are open-faced sandwiches.)

*

Cucumber Sandwiches

(This recipe should make about 30 sandwiches.)

1 loaf of white sandwich bread

1 large cucumber

1 small bunch of radishes

1 block of cream cheese, softened

salt and pepper to taste

½ stick melted butter

Cut the cucumber and radishes into about 30 thin slices. Brush the melted butter onto all the slices of bread. Spread some cream cheese on each slice of bread. Stack half the slices with four pieces of cucumber and four pieces of radish each. Top those with the other slices of bread. Press down gently. Trim off the crusts and cut each sandwich into four pieces.

Ultimate Blog Party-Party Post

Get ready for our party- a tea party of course! Welcome to Kimberly's Cup!

Click on individual menu items to go to recipes. Look around prior postings for fun tea party ideas and info. Find out a little more about me from My Favorite Things Meme. (Consider yourself tagged! Please comment/link back if you do the meme.)

What's a party without some party favors? Leave a comment by Friday and you'll be entered into the drawing for either a teacup candle, or a special tea party basket to have your own special tea at home. I'll do the drawing Saturday and post the winner then. Good luck!
~Kimberly

Our Menu for Tea

Tea in Your Favorite Flavor

Savories:

Quiche

Assorted Tea Sandwiches

More Tea Sandwiches

Scones:

Orange- Cranberry Scones

Devonshire Cream

Jam & Lemon Curd

Sweets:

Mini Fruit Tartlets

English Toffee

Cookies & Shortbreads
Tea Breads
Madeleines

Trifle

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Lemon Bars

Need helping planning your tea? Visit The Tea Time Countdown for ideas.

Ultimate Blog Party

Ok ladies, this really starts up tomorrow! Kinda random, but it sounds like fun.

I personally love going to a party that doesn't involve me needing to buy a product so someone else can get free or discounted products. Why does telling me there's no pressure to buy something make my feel quite the opposite? Since when can American women's only excuse to have friends over be because they are selling Pampered Chef, Party Lite, Southern Living, Uppercase Living, Arbonne, Mary Kay, Miracle-of-the-Month-Stuff, etc.?

Did I just go off on a tangent? Ok, guess I'll get off that soapbox (for now) and start planning a party. Of course, I guess we'll just have to have a TEA PARTY over here at Kimberly's Cup!