Tea and Cookies

My favorite afternoon drink is tea.  I am a coffee girl only in the morning to give me a little kick to start my day.  Hot green tea is what I will drink in hot or cold weather and especially when we go out to eat.  Favored teas just didn’t seem to be for me.

Then I found tea blends created by my dear friend, Kathleen Edinger who is the founder and owner of TeaScapes. This is like no other tea I have ever had. I LOVE it. The Spring Break is a combination of Black tea, papaya, peach, apricot, apple, strawberries, hibiscus, kiwi, orange peel, blackberry leaves, calendula,sunflower, rose petals, and natural flavors.  Check it out….

Jersey Cookie Girl founded by the AMAZING Nicole.  Her cookies are so YUMMY! Now being gluten free, I was sure I would miss these YUMMY cookies.   I was thrilled to taste her gluten free cookies courtesy of TeaScapes (picture on the left). They were just as good as her regular sugar cookies. The cookie tray on the right is a birthday tray Nicole shipped to North Carolina for my daughter’s birthday.  Cookies themed just for her – not a one was cracked or broken. Homemade delicious cookies shipped – YEAH!!! What a great way to share a taste of home with Belinda.

I love sharing my favorite products with you… Check both of these AWESOME business women out.  Have a favorite product you would like me to try and share, send me an email at HopeWs31@gmail.com.

Have a ThirtyOne-derful day!

Random thoughts

Good Morning Everyone – today is one of those mornings when I don’t have much to say.  AMAZING, right?  LOL.  Just some random thoughts to clear my head.  

Words can’t describe the emotions that I had on Monday when I heard about the bombing in Boston at the marathon.  My thoughts quickly reverted to that dreadful morning on 9-11.  The day of the dreadful shooting on the Virginia Tech campus.  The days were similar.  No one was expecting anything this horrific to happen. Lives lost and lives changed forever.  These days brought me to tears of gratitude for the safety of my family and friends.  911 and the VT shootings could have had different impacts on my life as family and close friends were “too close for comfort” to the events of those days.

During times like these, I reflect on all of the blessings in my life.  Whether those blessings have come through trials or whether we see them as precious gifts – we have all been given them.  My blessings include my family – although we don’t see each other as often as I would like (life always gets in the way) they are always in my thoughts and prayers.  The people that God has placed in my life for sometimes just a moment, for a season or for a lifetime are a precious gift. The trials of my life include my battle with drugs, my bulimia, cancer that struck and took my grandfather, my Aunts – Edythe & Elsie and Alzheimer’s that took my grandmother all helped to shape me into the person that I am today.  The greatest blessing of all is my daughter, Belinda Heldreth and of course my hubby, Rob.  

What are your blessings?  Think about all of the things – good or bad – in your life that have helped to shape and guide you to where you are.  Hug the ones that you love and tell them that you love them.  Reach out to old friends when you are thinking about them instead of waiting for the “perfect moment”.  Life is short.  God has a plan for all of us and although we don’t know what it is, we need to savor every moment.  Take the good with the bad.  Turn it over to God and he will get you through it.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings… Have a ThirtyOne-derful day.