Tea Setup

One of the best parts about this move and moving in with my roommate is discovering a new option for storing my tea and other hot drink stuff. She is a primarily coffee girl who loves tea, I am a primarily tea girl who now also loves coffee, so we balance. She had this amazing cart that I just knew would make an amazing drink station!

Behold! I feel so grown up.

Now, it has taken this over a year to get this awesome. The cart and the way it is organized was one of the first things we set up in the new place, before we even had a couch for our living room. We always envisioned having shelving to display teaware and coffee items, but only had one smaller bookshelf that didn't really "go" with the color of the cart. In a stroke of luck, earlier this spring, some people were moving out of their apartment and put these two heavy duty bookshelves by our dumpster! My roommate and I ran out in the beginning of a hail storm to get the first one and when we saw the movers with the second, we directed them straight to our place. Given the age of my building and how most of my furniture is hand me downs, the old school shelves fit right in!

We still use the little kitchen cart, mostly to store my steeper on so it doesn't mess up the wood of the other cart if it drips, and our honey stash. I LOVE lavender honey and rose honey!

We use the lower shelves as a hodgepodge. I store the teas I am reaching for most often to ice, as I am trying to mostly whittle my collection down to near nothing before I rebuild with less old teas. I also store coffee filters, empty tea canisters of teas I plan to replenish in the fall (hello chai!), and we store coffee, the occasional coffee travel mug, and random teapots that don't really "fit" on our more nicely curated shelves.

We have a Chinese themed shelf, with a lot of red tones, and a brown/black coffee shelf with our most loved coffee preparing devices. A red stovetop espresso maker was in use at the time of this picture, but it usually lives here.

The top of the cart includes my mug of the day, the tea I am brewing, cups, Keurig, kettle, sugar, and the teas I am working on at the moment to finish. The cups are adorable, but really are so small I never personally use them. I have used them when we have guests who all want tea at once.

The bottom of the rack holds 95% of the tea in these baskets. The upper right hand basket holds scales mostly, and a few teabag teas I save to use at school. The middle top shelf are my absolute favorite teas, most of which I am working on finishing because they are getting old, and the companies no longer exist. The teas on the upper and lower left have not been tasted yet. The teas on the bottom right are teas I have tried before and enjoy, the basket in the middle contains tea I have designated as iced.

Ultimately, I would like to reduce the tea to one row, so I can keep extra containers and such on the bottom, and just have higher tea turnover.

These are my favorite shelves. A blue/purple focus, and a green/yellow/aqua focus. These items are a combination of mine and my roommate's. Temporarily, there are also green and yellow tea tins that will ultimately go live in my bedroom once I drink all the tea inside!

These shelves are the remainder of the bunch. Leftover tea tins, tea brewing supplies, my roommate's stash of teabags, as most of the tea she drinks is in teabag form, and our handful of cookbooks.

Overall, I love our setup. I love the teaware being decor, I love having a dedicated brewing space, and storage that for the first time ever actually works for me! The kitchen cart was from IKEA back in the day. They have a similar cart, but it is not the exact same. The new version is a bit slimmer and shorter. That being said, if my roomie moved out tomorrow, the first thing I would do is go buy it! It looks great, fits baskets super well, and is a great size!

Been Awhile!

Well, it has been quite a long time since my last post. As it tends to be with teaching, and moving, things were quite the whirlwind. Combined with my first teaching year being (predictably) overwhelming, things like this blog got away from me.

I am hoping to restart posting here regularly, but first I should do some catch up first.

Location: I am still living in Virginia. It took me over a year to furnish this apartment so it looked like a real (semi) adult lived here, but I finally did it! I enjoy this area, and could see myself staying long term. I live with a girl I lived with in college, and having her as a roommate has been awesome.

Work: I have loved being a third grade teacher the last two years. Third grade is really in my wheelhouse as a great age group, and I have worked with some amazing people. There have been some issues with some coworkers and certain students, but such is life. I am excited to start a new year with a fresh batch of kids this fall.

Dating: I have been casually dating a man here for about a year, it is not destined to go anywhere, as he is a certifiable train wreck. But we have fun, he is a lovely person, and he provides companionship as I periodically attempt dating elsewhere. So far, my attempts have been unsuccessful, but school tends to be all consuming. I make stronger attempts during summers.

Tea: The tea hoard is actually getting under control. School has prevented me from being as active on Steepster as I would like, but school also prevents me from justifying new tea purchases. I have slowly but surely been working on it. New count to come soon, as well as pictures of my awesome tea/coffee setup!

Cooking: I have really gotten my shit together on the cooking front. I am no master chef, but I have mastered quite a few super awesome dishes that I can't wait to post. They are seriously amazing. I've been making a variety of deliciousness, enough that aforementioned man I date has no idea I am not a natural born amazing cook! I am still striving to improve, as I still stick to mostly simple things. No shame in my game, but I don't like the idea of being intimidated by anything, let alone a recipe.

Weight Loss: On January 1 of this year, I rejoined Weight Watchers. Things were kind of stressful at school, I was tired of how I looked and felt, and decided to just get serious and take the plunge. I have lost about 35 pounds since then, and am feeling great! Things have not always gone super smoothly, but I have stuck with it, and have every intention of continuing. My goal for this calendar year is to have lost 65 pounds total, which I feel is doable. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, but I am a big believer in challenging but achievable and realistic goal setting.

Exercise: I have always loved walking, but beginning Weight Watchers spurred me to kick up my exercise into high gear. I bought an inexpensive stationary bike, and went from walking three miles a couple of times per week to walking 5-7 miles five or six times per week. With the summer heat, I have not been exercising nearly as much, but I know come fall I will be walking like it is going out of style again. Walking alone or with my roommate is truly therapeutic for me, and I know I can't stay away for too long!

Well, that is the update. In many ways, things are exactly the same. In so many more, things are very different. My confidence is higher, I am healthier, and more adventurous. I am hitting financial goals, dabbling in the world of podcasts, meditation, reading for pleasure consistently for the first time in too long, and I've decided to start brewing my own kombucha. It is summer, why not?

I have made a particular effort to focus on myself these last six months after spending a year and a half totally immersed in my work, and I am looking forward to continuing to do so even more intentionally!