Because Typhoo tea was on sale right when we ran out of tea bags. (By the way, did you know that “ty-phoo” came from the Chi­nese word for doc­tor? I didn’t!)

Because there were only sug­ar cubes left in the cor­ner store on East­er Sun­day, when we ran out of sugar.

Because it’s rained near­ly every­day here in our neigh­bour­hood, it’s almost like we’re liv­ing on the British Isle.

So we decid­ed to go the extra mile on the sub­way and buy some prop­er tea ware from the thrift store, so we can have some prop­er tea this week­end and join in the Roy­al Wed­ding fun. The dain­ty tea cups and saucers cost approx­i­mate­ly £2.85 (or exact­ly $4.50 CAD), and we’ll be all ready if the queen ever comes over for tea. (Or the prince and the new princess! Aren’t they com­ing to Cana­da in July?)

We even made cucum­ber sand­wich­es! We made the most sim­ple, tra­di­tion­al kind accord­ing to this trusty source. So, basi­cal­ly thin­ly sliced cucum­ber, sprin­kled with salt and pep­per, and sand­wiched between two pieces of bread. The white bread was sold out at the gro­cery store, but that’s OK, WW bread is bet­ter for us anyway :)

We only made the cucum­ber sand­wich­es for fun. I would­n’t real­ly want to eat a whole one, because it’s kind of bland. But if one is adven­tur­ous one could try fanci­er ver­sions of the cucum­ber sand­wich. Like this cur­ried ver­sion, or these with mint and cream cheese. These open face ones on rye look pret­ty appeal­ing too!

Mike even hung up his British flag for the occa­sion (and found out that our door frames are made of met­al! More sur­faces to hang stuff with mag­nets! :D).

He also bought some crum­pets for break­fast, because he’s a big fan of crumpets.

I don’t care much for crum­pets, because I find them kind of bland (there seems to be a trend here… is it just me, or is Eng­lish food gen­er­al­ly bland?). So one morn­ing I decid­ed to try them with but­ter and syrup, because the back of them kind of look like pancakes…

… but they’re no pan­cakes. The syrup did­n’t change the flavour much. Oh well. What are crum­pets sup­posed to be eat­en with anyway?

But all in all we had a jol­ly good time drink­ing tea, eat­ing crum­pets, and talk­ing like char­ac­ters in Wal­lace and Gromit :D

Lots of peo­ple I talked to were kind of annoyed by all the exag­ger­at­ed excite­ment and fas­ci­na­tion around the roy­al wed­ding. And hav­ing planned my own wed­ding and enjoyed the com­plete absence of expec­ta­tion from both of our fam­i­lies (they’re the best!), I kind of wished that every­one would just leave the cou­ple alone so they can have a pri­vate time of cel­e­bra­tion. Well, I can only wish. But I think any wed­ding of two peo­ple who are deeply in love with one anoth­er is a hap­py occa­sion worth cel­e­brat­ing. So the roy­al wed­ding just gave us a rea­son to do some­thing fun and British (or what we think is British).

But no, we did­n’t stay up to watch it. But from the pho­tos I saw after­ward I think the prince and princess were gen­uine­ly hap­py, and for them I am happy.

And I think it’s always good to find things to be hap­py about. Like yes­ter­day, I saw that the mag­no­lia bush we walk by every week is final­ly blooming.

 

They’re almost white this year. I remem­ber that last year they were more pink. But look how grace­ful the soft petals are, unfolding.

 

That made my day. I hope this week will bring you many things that fill your heart with joy.

Chee­rio!