Dessie's Mad Hatter Tea Garden

I was grocery shopping one day last week and enjoying the Christmas tunes playing in the background.  I had to laugh when I heard those familiar lyrics, "Oh, the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful, And since we've no place to go, Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"  I happened to have a tee shirt, shorts, and flip flops on at the time.

 

 

 With PE having some beautiful summer weather recently, I've been struggling to get into the Christmas spirit.  Thursday's Crawl site was just what I needed to remind me that Christmas is just around the corner.  Dessie's Mad Hatter Tea Garden is located within The Christmas House, a temporary, seasonal shop that opened for business on Oct 8 and runs through Christmas Eve.  The Christmas House is situated inside the Moffett on Main Lifestyle Centre in Walmer, and has just about anything you need to decorate for the holiday season.

Meet the Barista
Patricia

 Thursday's Crawlers, Margaret Zoetmulder, Beth Vieira, Leanne Waller and her son, Daniel, Nomusa Nkomo, Gail Darne, Stella and Beryl Dawson, Fran de Beer, and June Nash, spent some time perusing the nativity sets and the decorated trees then headed to the back of the store where the Mad Hatter Tea Garden staff greeted us and pushed some tables together to accommodate our group.

This Week's Crawlers
Nomusa, Gail, Beryl, Fran, Leanne, June, Daniel,
Stella, Beth, Margaret



Zimbabweans Nomusa and Gail having tea at the
Coffee Crawl



The Tea Garden serves Ciro brand coffee and has a full breakfast/lunch menu along with a variety of cakes and cookies.  My cappuccino and Americano prepped by barista, Patricia, were very good but the small cups were only half full when served.... a bit disappointing, but the festive ambience, complete with snow-related background music, more made up for it.  Everything considered, the Mad Hatter Tea Garden certainly put me in a holiday mood and I'll definitely head over to the shop should I feel the need for a Christmas booster over the next week and a half.

Talk of Christmas preparations abounded at the table.... real vs artificial trees, e-cards vs snail mail cards, and turkey vs ham.  The next topic of conversation centered around baby African animals... giraffes, ellies, zebra, and PE's version of Santa's 8 tiny reindeer.... 7 tiny impala babies!  The community where I live in PE has a herd of impala on the premises, and within the past few weeks there have been 7 new additions to the herd.  The babies a so cute prancing about!  As I was busy prancing about snapping pics for the blog, the subject of mergers came up.... not the corporate variety, but photographic mergers.  Mergers happen when separate items in our 3-dimensional world merge into one item through the 1-dimensional perspective of a camera lens.  A couple of examples... two animals standing close to each other may look like one animal with two heads in a pic, or it may look like a background plant is growing out of someone's head in a pic.  I've seen numerous intentional merger pics of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa!  Check out the merger of Daniel with a Santa hat!

As I write this I know that where many of my fam/friends live in the U.S. the "weather outside is frightful."  Here's to wishing you all a "White Christmas!"  Enjoy!!!

~Thank you to The Mad Hatter staff for putting me in the Christmas spirit!

~Thank you to my son, Jeff, for posting all our U.S. bound snail mail Christmas cards from Atlanta!

Until next week,

Ellen