Tea and chocolate swap brag!

[Princess-Sparkles]

So, I'm the lucky one who received my amazing swap box. My swap partner was the lovely BethyVic. :lovey:everything was perfect and I'm so greatful. Now with the photos!


All my presents wrapped up. The two boxes had a lot of gifts wrapped.
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My assortment of tea. I can't wait to try them.
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My chocolate.  I'm so happy I have plenty of Hershey cookies and cream chocolate. I love everything here.
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My extras,  I'll be wearing the socks and bracelet on Christmas Eve.  ^_^
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I completely forgot to take a photo of the cookies I received,  but they are so yummy. I've already had six and my husband took two off me. If I've missed something I'll take a photo of it and post it here.

I cannot thank you enough BethyVic you've done an amazing job at putting everything together.

by the way if I get addicted to any of these teas, I may have to give you money to get me some more. 

[ladybastilla]

Looks like you got a lovely box. So excited to see that packages are arriving for the various holiday swaps.

[BethyVic]

I am so glad you liked everything!  And if you get addicted, I would be happy to help you out

[Mirnyj]

Such a great box! I'm so excited to see what everyone got!

And since this is not a pony swap, I'll move the brag thread over to OT.

[SunPony]

What a great swap box, congrats!  You have lots of teas it looks like!  Love those reindeer socks

[Honeycomb]

Lovely! Congrats on such a wonderful box!

[kaoskat]

Great box! Congrats!

[brighteyes]

And so it begins!  What a great start we are off to.  That is an awesome looking swap box! 

Post Merge: December 15, 2015, 05:07:32 PM

We got our swap box today from ladybastilla.  We are so spoiled!  She sent us tea from David's Tea and local teas and hot chocolate from Canada and lots of neat chocolates and stickers for my daughter and also a super sweet little ornament.  Be prepared to be bombarded with photos:

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Stickers!
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Adorable ornament front and back:
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Thank you so much ladybastilla for all the thought and effort you put into making this a super awesome swap box for us!  I have a "tea club" at work that I'm going to have to bring some of these teas into share with 

[ladybastilla]

Brighteyes, I'm so glad that you like your box. Tim Hortons makes many of my favorite teas, so I started there when deciding what to get you. I didn't have room to send the Blueberry White and Pomegranate White both in full boxes, so I went with the Blueberry since you'd listed that under Davids Tea when I asked anyway.

Your Davids flavors were inspired by their winter and Christmas / holiday collections--and I could kick myself, I meant to send you one of their menus as a fun momento and it somehow didn't wind up in there. I chose to go with the Mulled Wine and Cardamam French Toast teas because I knew I was including some unique cocoa mixes and those plus hot chocolate themed tea seemed like they would be redundant. The dark blue and gold star contained a tea that wasn't on your list, but with the colors of it I just had to get it for you. Plus, the tea it contains smells lovely. (I got to smell or taste samples of several winter / holiday teas when I went out.)

The samples were chosen because of what I mentioned above for the Pomegranate White (which is my *favorite* tea, by the way) and because I wanted to send you Pumpkin Chai but my local DT was sold out. It was still in stock online when I shipped to you, so now you can at least try it if you do decide to place an order.

The stickers and the Sweedish Berries are for your daughter. When you mentioned she liked Sweedish Fish, I thought it might be fun to send her the local variety.

I've sent a few people Lindt bars, so I knew they had Coconut and Chili even though those wouldn't be my thing. I've never had a bad bar from them (my favorite is their caramel and sea salt) so I figured those would be safe choices. I was originally going to get you a dark chocolate and orange bar, but I didn't see it there and then spotted the pineapple and thought that would be unique and fun.

My mom grabbed the chocolate covered almonds for me. We thought adding something in milk chocolate might be nice to balance things out. The dark chocolate pomegranate bites are fabulous. I buy those and the blueberry variety for myself around the holidays each year so I hope you like them, too.

I thought the hot chocolates would be a fun addition. The After Eight one is probably my absolute, hands down favorite cocoa mix. The Rollo is sweet and yummy. And the Coffee Crisp is based on a chocolate bar that is popular over here.

I hope you enjoy all of your goodies and your Bright Eyes ornament. I had a ton of fun shopping for you! And I think it's cool that you're part of a tea club. I bet you've got some stuff there that they haven't seen before.

[Sumire]

SunPony sent me this perfect swap box! (Apologies for the massive photos)

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See the silver, pink and iridescent beauty? I kept every scrap of that paper and every bit of ribbon!

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Amazing chocolate! Seriously, this is every type of chocolate I like best. The Buckeyes are super yummy even if they are branded by Ohio State (I grew up in Michigan ).

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SunPony you picked my very favorite Lupicia blends! Are you psychic? I'm excited to see local specialty tea too. I love trying new blends! (I was intrigued by chocolate and tea from Ohio but then I looked up exactly where in Kentucky you are and I'm not quite as surprised any more - but you did get me Virginia chocolate too!  )

I took a photo of the cute retro kitty pencil kit but I can't get it to format correctly -- rest assured everyone it is super cute! Still, it was totally overshadowed:

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Can you believe that perfect Glory ornament? I may have to keep it out all year long. And the card with Glory and Rarity my two magical purple-maned beauties! I had to have them come out and model with it. I love it so much! (and the cute decorated envelope it came in as well)

Thanks so much SunPony! I think you may have spoiled me for presents from my family this year! 

[SunPony]

Yay!  I'm so glad you liked everything Sumire!  I had fun shopping for you, I think we share taste in chocolate for sure.  Yes, I may -live- in KY but basically all the good shopping (especially the cute little tea and food and stationary shops!) is in Ohio.  I think every single item including the ribbon and wrap came from Ohio, excepting the Lupicia teas    And no I'm not quite psychic but i did read your tea notes really super carefully!   I hope you like the Cincy spice tea, I always get the rooibos version and i love it with milk so I thought you might enjoy it given your tea preferences.   

Glory is one of my long-time faves, too, she is so...glorious, hee hee.   

[melodys_angel]

Brighteyes--its soo odd looking at your brag (which is awesome <3) and  seeing things I see on a daily basis.  One of the chocolate things is exclusive to one chain of stores xD  And, well you aren't Canadian if you dont know what Tim Hortons is >>You got spoiled, congrats!

Beautiful boxes guys <3

[tikibirds]

rolo flavored hot chocolate? very cool.

[ladybastilla]

My turn! My turn!

I got a totally amazing box from Griffin. I got totally spoiled!

First, look at how cute this came wrapped:

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And here's my first glimpse inside:

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I'm glad that I've decided to go ahead and open my gifts. I had trouble fitting this box under my tree--there's no way all my boxes would've fit.

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Okay! Let's start with the teas:

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On the left we have Echinacea & Cranberry and on the right we have four different flavors of black tea with various fruit.

Here are two new blends for my infuser:

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I took shots of Griffin's descriptions of these ones:

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And now for the sweets. First, we have a whole bunch of chocolate bars I've never had / seen before. Yay for trying new things (and these all look delicious!):

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These ones are peppermint candies that have chocolate or caramel filling:

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I went out to look at lights part way through opening this box and ended up taking some of these with me for in the car. They're so good!

These ones are chocolate with soft fruit-cream (trying to describe and failing ) centers:

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The ones in the bag remind me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on what. They're great, though. Not sure what the Moomin item is, but I've heard others mention Moomin so it was neat to receive. (And I'm sure I'll find out what it is when I open it. )

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And here are the extras:

First we have beautiful stickers and scrapbooking decorations. I'll be getting my smashbook next week (likely the day after Christmas) so these will get put to great use then.

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Some gorgeous washi tapes and ribbons:

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A lovely little mug with a cocoa kit inside. Maybe I'll save this for Christmas Eve? We'll see...

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And last, here's my card. First the outside, along with some more holiday candy:

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... and look who is on the inside!!!

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Serena, what have you been eating?



Griffin, thank you so much. This box was a joy to open and I am having so much fun trying out all the treats you've sent me. Now I think I'm going to go and put on a cup of tea. I centainly have enough flavors to choose from.

[Griffin]

Ladybastilla, I'm happy to hear you enjoyed the box! I had a blast putting it together. The chocolate/candy side is somewhat Fazer dominated but I wanted to send Finnish stuff. The individually wrapped chocolates have raspberry yoghurt filling inside - I think your description "soft fruit-cream" captures it quite well, though! The Moomin ones are some sort of fruit candy (it's been ages since I had them last myself so I don't quite remember) which are partly sweetened with xylitol so they are good for your teeth as well!

And now onto my own brag! I got a wonderful box from Karma.

The box came wrapped in a beautiful black snowflake paper and cute owl tape!
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Hiro already rubbed himself against the box as soon as I brought it home and I was pretty certain I was going to find something with catnip inside!
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Both cats went totally crazy with those tea bags, this photo came out blurry and I didn't even get a good picture of Toffee, he wouldn't stay still for a second.

On top of the box I found this, what a gorgeous gift bag!
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It contained the extras you see in the next two photos: a holiday themed pen, a cute hairpin, and some more tea, chocolate and candy! I smelled the liquorice before I even opened the bag, hehe. Yummy!

Karma had planned the box as an advent calendar and everything was individually packaged with cute numbered labels.
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As it was already the 18th, I got to open most of the envelopes right away! So many varieties to try!
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Here are some close-ups:

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The Dark Roca chocolates are tasty, very interesting! I think the center is some sort of brittle? I was not expecting that based on the picture, I thought it was going to be soft until I bit into it. They are very good, though! I also had a cup of 'Tension tamer' last night, a herbal infusion with Eleuthero, mint and lemongrass. It was great! I had to google Eleuthero though, hadn't heard of it before.

I opened no. 19 this morning and found a mint chocolate Christmas tree, not pictured here obviously. Looking forward to opening the rest of them in the course of the next couple of days! Exciting!

Thank you again for the lovely box, Karma!