Tea Wallets!

Look what I just got:Tea wallets! Handmade by Megan Dunham of Half-Pint House. Aren’t they adorable?When Megan isn’t writing for WORLDmag.com, blogging, tweeting, or directing a Classical Conversations homeschool group, she’s designing and sewing a variety of creative items. Megan sells her tea wallets for $8 each (which includes shipping and four complimentary tea bags) through Half-Pint House Handmade along with zippy bags, travel tissue holders and Scripture memory packs (traditional and index sizes).The other day I had breakfast at a restaurant and ordered tea. They brought hot water in a small pot along with one tea bag. For English Breakfast tea, the resulting brew was extremely weak; it barely colored the water. I asked if I could have a second tea bag, and the waitress made an apologetic sound and shook her head. “Sorry. But I can bring more hot water.”Hm. Call me crazy, but additional hot water wouldn’t do much to improve weak tea, now, would it?Boy do I wish I had Megan’s tea wallet tucked into my purse. Unfortunately, they hadn’t yet arrived. If they had, I could have subtly pulled out one of the Trader Joe’s English Breakfast tea bags she included and redeemed that wimpy pot.What’s more, now that they’ve arrived, I can go out with friends in the evenings and order tea. Decaffeinated tea options at restaurants are usually limited to herb teas. That’s fine, but sometimes I want black tea. Now I can order any kind of tea that interests me and trade out their caffeinated option with a decaffeinated tea bag from my tea wallet (I can drink theirs some other day before noon or 1:00 p.m.).I could have been toting around tea bags in some other random bag, but tea wallets are specialized and classy enough to pull out in public. And they’re called tea wallets, so tea-drinkin’ guys shouldn’t be embarrassed to pull them out of their briefcases during a business lunch. Ask Megan to create one out of super-masculine fabric and use one of those awesome suit jacket buttons (any below seem manly to me, but the middle button is particularly nice). I highly recommend Megan’s tea wallets for yourself or as gifts for the tea lovers in your life.** Note: You might want to join Megan’s new blog carnival: Tourist in Your Own Town. She explains:

We’ve lived in a fairly major city (St. Louis) for almost 5 years now and there is still so much to do here that I’ve never done because I know I can always do it later. Before I know it, later is going to have come and gone and I’m going to wish we’d done all those things. So, I’m going to become a tourist in my own town. Every week I’ll come back and post one cool thing about this great area in which we live. Let’s help each other explore the whole world through each other’s eyes! If you post something on your blog, let me know and I’ll make a list with your links.

Tea Wallet photos by Ann Kroeker (colors are not true)

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