I want to take time to say a very special thank you to the companies who helped me discover tea in a new way by allowing me to try their teas and for the communications we had.  Many of those companies have become ones that I drink from often and constantly recommend to others.  Without their generosity I would not have been able to explore the world of teas as much as I did.

I think that one of the most important things I have learned in my tea journey is that drinking and tasting teas invoke feelings or thoughts and is not just about taste.  Often those things are hard to put into writing.  So many times I drank a tea and could come up with no way of describing what I was experiencing.  Perhaps because I am just not skilled enough with written words or maybe those feeling weren’t meant to be told but instead experienced.

I wish that time and my life had allowed me to document every moment of every tea I drank and continue to do so for a long time but life is taking me on a different path.  I will still be around drinking as much tea as I can each day, so feel free to drop me a line!  I hope that all of you will continue to enjoy tea.  Experience tea.  Share tea.  And make tea a part of your life everyday.

I wanted to give you a quick update on where things stand in my life and where things are going here on the blog.  In October of last year, I got married!  So you may notice that my name is now Jenn Broda.  The time has absolutely flown by since then.  Working, going back for a master degree and learning how to live with another person imposing on my time has kept me quite busy!  Tea is still a huge part of my daily life and I cannot imagine what each day would be like without the enormous amount I drink.  I do feel awful that I have not been documenting that here.  And so, I want you all to know that I am contemplating where to go with this blog from here.   I will admit that I feel a little out of the loop in the tea world since I have not been keeping up with tea news for a while now and my life is quite full of many hobbies/loves.  One of those in particular I am connected to in a way that makes it the only thing I want to do in my spare time!  But I often think about how much I miss writing here and how much I gained in my tea journey as I did so, yet my life seems to be taking me in different directions.

With that said, I would like to share a quick tea story with you as well as pictures of the wedding and then I shall wrap this post up.  My husband and I just returned from our belated honeymoon to Alaska.  I had sadly left my selection of tea at home (one always forgets something) and was without tea the entire trip because I refused to drink the crummy tea bags offered to me.  Not saying all tea bags are crummy.  These were, I tried them.  But all was made right the last day of our trip which was spent in downtown Seattle.  We had lots of tea as I insisted we stop in every tea shop we came upon.  There was no agenda that day, we simply explored.  We discovered a lovely Chinese tea shop and the sweet owner, whose husband did not speak a word of English and was enjoying tea with some friends, made us Ali Shan as well as another, higher elevation Oolong and two Yunnans.  My husband and his father (who spent the day with us) were a little leery when I pulled them into the shop for the tasting.  They figured I would look around, buy what I wanted and then leave but instead we spent over an hour drinking tea and having a great time!  The owner even offered to order an Yixing pot from their supplier when I admired one that wasn’t for sale and I hated to tell her that I wouldn’t be around to pick it up since I was returning home the next day.  I think my favorite part of the time we spent drinking tea that day was watching my husband and father-in-law experience teas in a way that they never have.  Watching people react to and enjoy tea brings me great pleasure.

And now to finish off this post I will leave you with a few pictures from my wedding.  Our lovely photographer agreed to let me use a few of the photos and if you would like to see more of her work from the wedding or the other amazing things she documents with her camera, you can visit her blog here.

That does it for now folks.  As I give more thought to where to go with this site and make a decision I shall drink lots and lots of tea!  As if I didn’t do that already…

5 Reasons Why You Should Join Steepster – Lainie Petersen

Steep Your Tea in Some Social Media With Steepster – Michel Wolfe

Do You Steepster? – Madam Potts

I thought it might be fun to work my way through their tea chest and so every Friday for the next 20 weeks I will feature and review one of the teas.

Here are the teas:

Earl Grey
Orchid Vanilla
Flora
Lemon Ginger
English Breakfast
Silk Oolong
Chamomile Tisane
African Solstice
Black Currant
Formosa Oolong
Citrus Mint
Jasmine Green
Bombay Chai
White Ambrosia
Coco Truffle
Sencha
Estate Darjeeling
White Ginger Pear
Raspberry Nectar
Green Tango

Make sure to check back tomorrow for the kick off of Tea Forté Friday!

The product(s) included in this post were sent to me to be considered for review by the company mentioned or by a PR agency that represents them.

On a personal note, I have plans to resume my posting asap now that the holidays are over.  I was going to take pictures and write yesterday after work but had to take my sweet dog to the vet.  Will spare you the details because I’m sure you don’t want to hear it but sick pets stress me out beyond belief and I was not up to anything after I finally got home.

So, drink lots of tea and will see you soon with more tea reviews!

Go enter it.  Now.

• Read tea books.  Here is a list of some free tea ebooks.
• Listen to or watch your favorite tea podcast.  Take a look at the links on the right for suggestions.
• Watch lots of movies and look for tea drinking mistakes like leaving tea bags in cups.
• Catch up on TeaChat.
• Get dizzy looking at The Ultimate Chinese Teahouse.
• Make a tea wish list.
• Get around to making a tea journal.
• And of course drink lots of tea.

Hope you all are staying healthy!

This year staying in a motorhome made it really easy to have my morning tea.  We didn’t go down to the field for the mass ascension because we had great seats right outside the motorhome and there was no need to go fight the INSANE amount of people.  Attendance this year for a weekend event was estimated at 80,000 just to give you an idea.  My dad delivered breakfast burritos to us (he had to be down on the field) and my mom and I bundled ourselves up in layers of sweaters and coats to sit out in the 32F degree weather and watch the balloons with tea in hand.  We had a great time and I’ve included just a few pictures.  Sadly though, my camera batteries died before all the balloons were in the air.  I hate my camera.