National Hot Tea Month is here and we're sharing ways to celebrate!

Celebrating National Hot Tea Month with a delicious cup of tea and TeaTime Magazine

This year, Barb's Tea Service's celebration (or lack thereof) of National Hot Tea Month is a tale of two cities:  Detroit and Orlando, where we quite literally ran a bit "hot and cold" respectively.

Homebase for us is Michigan, but, after the holidays, we enjoyed a reprieve from the cold temperatures in Florida with good friends, Pam and Quint. In a resort community just north of Orlando, most of our "afternoon tees" were spent with a set of clubs and a half a dozen dimpled white balls. However, at a weekend market near our home-away-from-home, I did purchase some "Swamp Water" (aka Lemongrass) tea. When in Rome. . . 

Swamp Water tea from Florida 

While we spent most of National Hot Tea Day (January 12th) at the airport (where there is a great dearth of fine tea) waiting for our flight back to Michigan, we were comforted in knowing we still have the rest of January to celebrate hot tea. And, with welcoming temps peaking at 30 degrees, it's a given that hot tea will be on the daily menu.

                            Afternoon "tee times" in Florida

But how best to indulge this special month devoted to hot tea? Throughout the years (and cited in our January blogs of the past), we've partaken in different ways to honor a warm cuppa. This year, we're updating a bit with National Today's top suggestions along with three of our favorites from previous years: 

1. Drink hot tea with those you love
2. Buy a new tea you've never tried
3. Give yourself a mental moment
4. Visit a favorite tearoom 
5. Text an old friend and set up a tea date
6. Make a fresh pot of loose-leaf tea and start a new book or magazine!

1. For number one, I'm drinking tea that I love and sharing, via BTS video, with all tea friends I adore! I'm drinking Angelina's Earl Grey and a variety of teas from Palais des Thes, both purchased in Paris and gifted to me by our favorite NY couple, Matt and Jenna. (Catch our latest video - and more! -on YouTube, under Barb's Tea Service.)

Trying new teas all throughout Hot Tea Month

2. I believe my purchase of "Swamp Water" qualifies for this one.  

3. Brewing a cup of tea with no agenda. Here's an opportunity to treat ourselves to a hot cup of tea and just relax.  I might schedule an accompanying prolonged look out the window or a long stretch on the living room recliner.

4.  Tonia's Victorian Rose tearoom with Laura Q. on the calendar for this week!

Back to our local tearoom: Tonia's Victorian Rose

5.  My neighbor beat me to the text! Another tearoom visit with Clay, on the calendar for the following week. 

6.  Make a fresh pot of one of my Paris teas and set into the latest issue of TeaTime Magazine. The March/April edition has a Gilded Age-related article penned by your humble BTS blogger!

However - and wherever -  you decide to celebrate Hot Tea (day or month), we raise our cup of Earl Grey (or Swamp Water) and wish you all a happy tea holiday!