Making Your House a Home Challenge-Week 2

One of the best things my mom passed on to me was her appreciation for a good cup of tea. As a little girl, my tea was more a white, watery mixture of milk and sugar with a splash of tea thrown in for good measure. Older and wiser, I came to value the cup of tea that could stand alone--minus the lemon wedges or sugar cubes. Pregnant and queasy with morning sickness, I developed a love of decaf teas, peppermint in particular, which made many a first trimester morning bearable. I've not yet gone back to the regular, caffeinated version of the tea of my Irish-heritage influenced mother, but I have found teas to celebrate all occasions.

I've also come to understand that it's not the caffeine quotient or flavor selection I'm savoring when I sit with my favorite hot, steaming mug. It's the memory of that shared moment with my mom, that as an adult still brings out the little girl in me. Even when she visits, and rises (as a mom always seems to do) well before the sun, she brews two cups of tea. Careful to pour a *leaded* version for herself and decaf for me, the warmth of that cup greets me when I make my way down to the kitchen. Occasionally, now, as I've joined the long-aproned line of dawn-seeing moms, she'll even let me fix the tea.

With my girls, in the grocery store this week, my eyes fell on a Stella Doro cookie display, and I was again reminded of the teas of my youth. Searching for the lovely Lady Stella variety, to no avail, I compromised with a similar selection of biscuits from our local Italian grocery. Cookies in hand, I walked into the Ark's kitchen and turned on the kettle. While one girl took several of our new, porcelain dessert plates to the dining room, another carefully arranged the sweet confections on a tray. A beautiful, floral tea pot filled with the lovely, steaming amber liquid rounded out the table. And for a half an hour, my daughters, baby T, and the periphery cookie-eater (The Boy) enjoyed a lovely teatime and one another's company while making memories for them as I entertained a few of my own.

To learn more about the Making Your House a Home Challenge, visit Suzanne's blog.