EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH TEA

As a young girl I loved having tea parties with my bears and other stuffed animals.  Since I am an only child my imagination has always been expansive and vivid.  Growing up in England drinking tea was part of every time of the day.  We woke up - we drank tea. At lunch time we drank tea. In the afternoon we drank tea; and right before bedtime we had tea. 

 

When I was a child my family was really just my mom and I. My aunt and cousins moved all over the world due to my uncle’s job; so we didn’t see them much. I remember that my mom had a lot of friends who lived close by. While visiting they would sit around the dining room table sipping tea while eating finger sandwiches and biscuits (which is what we called cookies in England).  The ladies would talk for hours, while I drew pictures in my sketch book.  After a while of drawing pages and pages of different things. I would start asking, “Mum what time are we going home?”  Sometimes it was shortly after I had asked her for the fourth time. Other times, when it got too late, we would spend the night.

We moved to the United States when I was eleven. I’m not sure why we stopped drinking as much tea.  It could have been that my mom had to work longer hours or because, when we first arrived, she didn’t know many people to invite to tea time.

Moving forward to my thirties, I tried to make a point of spending more one-on-one time with my Mom.  We started visiting local tea rooms and, as we sipped, all of the memories from my childhood starting coming back.  My birthday is in January; so, when it comes to party themes, my options are limited.  I decided one year to throw a birthday tea party.  I bought my first tea set for 12, rented white chairs and joined two tables together to make a huge square.  After the guests arrived we started to chit chat over tea and sandwiches and ended the night with pink champagne and with chocolate covered strawberries.  It was one of the most memorable birthday events ever and has since become a tradition for me and my friends. 

After hosting the birthday party for some years, I gained the confidence to venture into taking my tea party on the road.  On November 21, 2014, Lady D’s Traveling Tea Party was founded and I began to share my love of tea parties with ladies of all ages. We offer all types of themes and also are able to customize the tea time according to our customer’s request.

Each time I host a tea party I feel great happiness seeing the guests smile as they enjoy tea and one another. It closes the circle of warmth that I remember so well from my childhood.

Everything is better with tea!

XOXO,

       D. Blooming

 

She Believed She Could, So She Did

 

 Should I? Could I? Was the questions that would go around and around in my head for many years when I was in a major depression state.

Before my awakening that happened about four years ago, I would constantly ask these questions to myself.

When you go through a period of depression even the simple things like folding laundry, doing the dishes are so hard to do.  I went through years of holding myself together during the work week, but when the weekend came along, all I wanted to do was be in bed.  I could barely make it to soccer games or visiting family or friends.  If I did leave the house all I could think about was what time was I getting home so I could go back to sleep. 

When I finally came to grips with myself to truly make a change.  I started off with small steps as to not to overwhelm myself by doing things that I used to do that made me happy. I started crafting again, reconnecting with friends that I hadn't talk to in so long.
I decided to also talk to my neighbors that I didn’t even know their names and embarrassing to say I had already been living in our house for over six years.

During my awakening I did finally accept that my medical depression is something I will have to deal with all my life, but when I feel that my mood is going down, I reach out to my friends, invite them over, or go to places I enjoy, have kids come over for play dates with my boys.  just something to keep myself away from isolation and then slowly fall into that dark place that I used to be in for so long.

Today I work very hard to not let my moods go up and down so drastically, I'm so in tune with my emotions and my body now, so when I feel like I'm creeping down, I quickly decide to do things that keep me happy.

Now that the weather is better I'm finally giving some TLC to my deck and working on a teatime fairy garden that I've wanted to do since I was a little girl.
My husband and I apart from running around with ours boys doing Boy scout activities and soccer, we are working on a fire pit area in our backyard, so our family can hang out together and have some good quality conversations with our kids over some delicious S’more’s
Now when I ask myself should I do this or could I do this? I do it!

Sometimes it’s not easy but there's no better feeling than completing something that you thought you could never do.


XOXO,

D. Blooming

 

Where It All Began

This is the first time that I am venturing into the world of blogging; so what I want to accomplish with my blog posts is to share how I strive to live creatively while balancing family life, work life and my other interests that I love to do. 

Let me just give you a little background about myself and how I got to be the person I am today.
 I was born in England and moved here to the U.S. when I was 11 years old. I am an only child and was always very shy. I had issues with my weight which, to this day, I struggle with. I’m always trying to live a healthier eating life style.  I had my oldest son when I was 21 and was a single mother for ten years, until I met my husband at work. From that first date I knew he was the one.  Six months later we were engaged and got married.  We started a family right away. Twelve years later we have two other boys and our chihuahua named Chloe.  

 Going back to when I was in my twenties, I started to have episodes of depression. I thought this was normal because I hadn't found "Mr. Right" and craved to start a family with that special man that I did not have when I was growing up.  At thirty I was married and had just had our first son when my depression started to get worse. I thought I had post postpartum blues, which I probably did, but it just would never go away.  By the time our second son was born three years later, my depression got to the point that, when I was not working during the week, I was in bed almost all day. It was that ugly secret that I kept between myself and family.  I was always so hard on myself - thinking I was bad wife and mother. Even though my husband did what he could to try and draw me out of my darkness, nothing helped.  Four years ago is when it all changed.  I was diagnosed with a medical condition that could have major effects on my brain. During those six months of MRIs and waiting to see if things would get better or worse, I started to seriously look at where I was in life. I asked myself the question that changed it all.


 “If I only have a limited time to live, am I happy with everything I have accomplished in my life?”

 I immediately knew what the answer was.  From that point is when I started what I called my Awakening.  I decided to stop looking back to the past - at all of my faults, the things I had done to others and what others had done to me - and just started to look ahead. I began making the changes that I needed to make me happy and also found great doctors to help me.  I knew that I needed to learn to love myself first to truly feel happy. Then I could bring that happiness to my family.  Don't get me wrong. My clinical depression will always be there; but I have learned through the years how to overcome getting to those very low dark places like I had before.  I hope to share some of my methods with you through this blog as time goes on. Through the last four years I have reintroduced all the passions that I had left behind so many years before. I also learned how to use mindfulness to help me be more grateful, appreciative and simply happy.  To some the phrase "being happy" may come easily but it used to be painfully hard for me.  

Now that I am in a great place personally with myself, I have helped create a more positive family life and pursued so many dreams that I never thought I could accomplish before.  I have a full time career in a field that I love. In addition to that I am an entrepreneur with a Traveling Tea Party company and also host creative events.  I have mentored at-risk teens and am always looking for ways to give back to the community by conducting workshops about promoting positive self-image.  I'm so thrilled with where I am now, but am so excited to see what else is to come.  I hope you continue to follow my blog as I write more specifically about how I live creatively happy as a wife, mother, career woman and entrepreneur.

XOXO,
D. Blooming