The Stillroom

Someone posed the question, “how long should we leave holiday decorations up?” It was interesting to see how many people had opinions on this subject.

My mom always said to leave the tree up until New Year’s Day or it will be bad luck. Some people say until Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve. The Christmas season is basically from December 25th until January 5th, which is also known as the 12 Days of Christmas. I think it depends on a few things. If family members are on vacation, putting away a tree is easier if helpful hands are on deck for wrapping those precious memories and carefully putting them back into their totes. Help is nice for hauling away a tree to be recycled or boxing up a tree and putting it in the basement or attic until we meet again. There is also running the sweeper. For some it might depend on how many needles are on the floor or how bad your cat is.

This year, I put away mostly everything the day after Christmas but I leave my favorite things up. Those are usually glowing lanterns and books or art that depict the winter months ahead. I don’t think the bad luck thing really matters. We get what we get both good and bad. I also think a lot of people (me) just want to put this whole year behind us and it can’t happen soon enough.

I hope everyone is having a good holiday season and I hope you enjoyed the new way most of us celebrated. My brothers and sister still made all of the traditional foods that would have ended up on our family buffet for the Christmas Eve gathering. This year, we celebrated in our personal pods and it was a silent night for sure. It was funny because we all ended up with each others speciality. Smoked meats, halushki, pierogies, ham, brisket, cookies and gifts all made their way around the family block. We managed to be apart, together.

The parents are celebrating their 91st and 92nd Christmas season on this planet. They were sad at first but all of us came around, socially distanced, masked up and had great visits from wayyy across the room, in shifts and limited time slots. I don’t know if these are seriously against the rules of safety precautions we have learned to live with over the past year or not. I think we will all be ok.

My nephew has been called to serve in Bahrain over the next year so we won’t see him as he packs up and leaves for duty on January 8th or so. I think that’s his birthday and he is also a newly wed. It meant a lot to the parents to see him before he deploys.

We lost a family member this year to cancer which was so unbelievably unexpected. We lost a couple of acquaintances from Covid. Like so many others, weddings were canceled, funerals felt risky, Dr. appointments were shuffled. So crazy.

So, there were good things that happened too. The election ended on a note of hope and a vaccine is finally being doled out for this devastating virus. My sister used to host up to twenty people every Thanksgiving but this year, her husband passed. She and I regrouped (mentally) and decided to have a pod meal with our mum and dad. OMG. We had some great laughs that made us cry. Released endorphins. After dinner, we got my parents’ Christmas Tree out of the attic, put it up and brought her decorations down and let her take a few days to dress it up. She said she couldn’t do it and we said, no hurry. She had it done the next day! It looks beautiful as always. I will post a picture of it before we take it down, New Year’s Day.

The Stillroom had a good year. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that fact that we have so many tea drinkers out there! As so many of you know, The Stillroom shop opened on 9-11 mostly as a gift shop. This was before online shopping became the norm. On that fateful day, I made a small corner for people to have a complimentary cup of tea from The Stillroom. Soon, I started to get requests for other flavors besides the Wintermint (which they should really bring back) that I served. It was my way to promote comfort in these very trying days for anyone that wished to warm up and relax for a few moments out of their day. I do take comfort in having a fine cup of hot chamomile when I feel like I need a blanket and don’t have one. To me, tea is like a mental blanket. Anyhow, in no time, The Stillroom morphed into a full blown tea shop!

Granted, we don’t carry a lot of loose teas because the demand for the more convenient bag o’ tea is much greater. However, the Harney & Sons loose teas that we do sell are top notch! I get calls every now and again asking if we have loose tea. I say we are limited in selection but the quality is outstanding and if they need more of a selection, call the Blue Monkey in Squirrel Hill. Her tea store is awesome! The Stillroom operates on a smaller scale that suits our neighborhood and meets the demands of most of our tea connoisseurs.

This leads to the topic of tea brands. The changes over time as far as ordering tea from three thousand miles away has become rather difficult for a small shop such as The Stillroom. When we first started to order our tea from Portland, Oregon, no matter how large the box was, flat rate shipping was ten dollars and we needed to meet the 100 dollar minimum with every order which was great. However, over time those rates started to go up to the point where now the shipping is almost as much as the tea order itself! Plus, the minimum order is now hundreds. Unfortunately, The Stillroom can no longer incur this increase in shipping and rising order minimums.

My current plan for 2021 is to increase the inventory of the Harney & Sons Tea. Located in New York, they are a family owned and operated tea company. The Stillroom has carried limited varieties of Harney Tea since we first opened and they are now going to be our main supplier along with a few smaller companies that stock us with our blooming tea pods and the new tea drops that will be featured as a new product for the tea lover!

As Stash flavors sell out, I will do my best to replace those flavors with compatible teas from Harney. I hope this doesn’t upset the apple cart too much but it is me doing my best to be able to bring quality teas to the area in the future without having to shutter the shop.

So, on that news I am going to peruse the catalogs to see what kind of flavorful goodness I can bring to your cup in the New Year.

Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you for making The Stillroom your stop for this, that and the other!