Hello friends! The advent calendar has accompanied me places last week – by which I mean that I went to a Church camp and brought the two boxes that should be opened there. I think having things in different boxes for each day makes it very easy to open, especially compared to other advents where everything is behind a door, so you need to bring the whole box with you.

Lupicia Advent Day 8: Orange Pomander 

The Orange Pomander is a tea that’s new to me, and from the description, it’s a blend of Darjeeling, spices, and orange. I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I’m not sure why, but the tea made me think of mulled wine, although on second thought, it is more like those chai teabags before you put milk into them. If I had more teabags and milk, I would have definitely tried a milk tea version. 

If you’re worried about the spices, the good news is that the spices and orange are not very strong. You can taste them, but they don’t overpower the delicate black tea. This was a nice start for the day!

Lupicia Advent Day 9: Decaf Carol 

This tea was pretty timely in that I forgot to open it in the morning, but I could still have it on the day it was meant to be opened because it’s decaf! I’ve had carol before (Carol was the Day 4 tea in this advent) and I thought the decaf version was just as nice!

Lupicia Advent Day 10: Joyeaux Noel

I hate to say this but this was a huge FAIL, I hated this tea so much! It’s supposed to be inspired by roasted chestnuts with a bitter roasted aroma and a sweet finish, but it was just oddly bitter (reminded me of coffee, sorry coffee drinkers, I’ve never had proper coffee but this is what I imagine from the smell). The tea legitly made me want to puke and even though I switched to hotel Boh tea to get the taste out, I still didn’t like it.

Sorry but this is an AVOID from me! Unless you really like roasted tea; then maybe it might work for you.

I talked about this tea to a friend after posting about it and she told me she had tried it and didn’t remember it tasting like this. So it’s possible I got a weird one – we’ll have to wait for her to get back and try her advent for us to know.

Lupicia Advent Day 11: Pin 

The 11th day was a change from all the teas because it was a really cute pin! I’m normally not a pin person, but the tea tin design is nice and I’ve definitely got to find time to wear this.

Lupicia Advent Day 12: La Belle Époque 

La Belle Époque is a fairly straightforward black tea as it’s a blend of Darjeeling and non-Darjeeling black tea (the non-Darjeeling black tea is there to give it some robustness). It’s a very smooth and drinkable tea – slightly sweet, a little woody (somehow I always find darjeelings a bit woody) and not too strong even if you steep it for a longer time. It could be me, it could be the time, but I didn’t get many complex notes from this. Still, I could see this being a good daily drinking tea

Lupicia Day 13: Decaf White Lavender and Mint 

This is a soothing tea with minty and floral notes – honestly would be very good as a bedtime drink! It’s a very straightforward tea, I’m quite sure I’ve had something like this before. So while I like it, I don’t know if I’ll go out of my way to buy it.

Lupicia Advent Calendar Day 14: White Chocolate Bean

I procrastinated on trying this because white chocolate bean just didn’t sound appealing. For reasons unknown, I had a vision of a mushy green pea or something similar coated in white chocolate.

Thankfully, the bean was crunchy and nutty so this is more like a white chocolate nut. Not my favourite but something I won’t have issues finishing

Craft Update

I feel like I did a lot this week because I finally finished the Totoro part of my Totoro cross stitch and you can actually see what I’m trying to do now! Before this, I think it was pretty hard to tell what the pattern was.

I also managed to do two quick Christmas crochet projects, which will most likely be given to my Secret Santee as coasters!