November Journal: Winter is coming

My favorite warming tea blends, winter wellness, and holiday embroidery plans

Hello friends,

Does anyone else feel a bit of whiplash going into November? Especially in the years when early autumn feels more like summer, I admit I’m often taken a bit by surprise this month. I spent a little while yesterday looking through photos from previous Novembers, and was struck by its unpredictability. Lots of colorful leaves in the trees, but also snow on the ground. Multiple school-cancelling blizzards early in the month. In November, anything can (and probably will) happen. Winter is coming, friends, even when early November’s changeable nature would have us forget.

Photo taken November 1 of last year

The beginning of this month always feels a bit like a slow inhale to me: there’s nothing much on the calendar, and not a lot going on. And yet flip a few pages forward and the winter holidays seem impossibly near. This year I hope to neither rush toward the oncoming holiday tide, nor try to hold it back - but to simply receive the days as they come. And despite an unseasonably warm autumn thus far, I’m feeling primed for all the November-y things: wool socks, warm sweaters, baking bread, cinnamon-spiced tea.

Let’s dive into this month’s Journal, which accompanies the November Journal episode of The Tea’s Made podcast. (Read til the end to learn more about my new monthly Journal feature!)

A cozy cup…

This month I’ve got two warming, hearty, cinnamon-forward blends to recommend. First up, Light of Day Organics Heart Warming Cinnamon Tea - a hearty rooibos tea with cinnamon, apple, orange, clove and cardamom. Rooibos is a great herbal option if you like a more robust tea without the caffeine. It has a fuller body than a lot of herbals, and I’ve even read that some people drink it with milk and sugar - though I have not tried this myself. This particular blend is made on a Michigan tea farm, and it’s lovely (as well as chock-full of vitamins and minerals.)

Next up, we’ve got a more traditional option: Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon Spice, black blend with orange, clove, and warming cinnamon that comes in a display-worthy tin - wouldn’t it look nice on a table with some mugs and a fall-themed tea service to offer your guests as part of your Thanksgiving spread? Harney & Sons offers this tea in decaf as well, which is always nice as a post-dinner option.

Both of these teas are ultimately cozy, perfect for curling up under a soft blanket in front of a fire, book in hands. The warming spices are said to help with digestion (again, perfect as a post-Thanksgiving-meal treat!) and they smell so delicious: I think of them as a simmer pot you can drink.

In my hands…

On the November Journal episode of The Tea’s Made podcast, I talked about some of the holiday gifts I’ve stitched in the past (see photos of my very imperfect designs from years past below, as well as a kit I’m working on for this year).

Listen for more details, and see my product recs below.

Mentioned in the episode:

• Printable adhesive paper, which would make your own designs so easy to stitch

• Pre-printed stick-and-stitch designs: love these snowflakes, these fun designs for lovers of books (and cats!), and vintage-inspired holiday designs.

Get-ready-for-winter wellness

It’s the time of year to start rethinking our wellness, which may include addressing our bodies’ nutritional needs in a new way, re-strategizing sleep, or looking ahead to cold and flu season. Here are some parts of my personal wellness plan:

• There are several herbal tinctures brewing on my tea shelf - listen to The Tea’s Made November Journal episode to learn more about my adventures in herbal medicine-making.

• As I get older, lower sunlight has started to impact me in new ways. It used to just be general fatigue and a lack of energy, now I actually get achy muscles, too. A quality Vitamin D supplement really seems to help.

• Mornings are feeling awfully dark these days, too. Sunrise alarm clocks, and in particular, the Hatch Restore clock, have been a morning game-changer for me. With a gentle light mimicking the sunrise to slowly illuminate the room, getting up before dawn no longer feels like being repeatedly hit by a bus. Hatch has lowered their price on my beloved Restore 2, and my affiliate link will get you free shipping. There are also cheaper sunrise clocks like this one, and while they may not have all the fancy features, they still get the job done.

TV worth watching

I don’t watch a lot of television (she says without an ounce of self-righteousness, promise.) I just find that I have a hard time getting into new series, or feeling engaged enough to remember to return to them later when I have so many other things I could be doing (not all of them productive or edifying, mind you) with my time. But for the past four years, Eric and I have watched every season of Only Murders in the Building as it’s been released. As of this writing I haven’t watched the Season 4 finale, so no spoilers please - but if you watch, I’m so curious what you’ve thought of the season in general! (I’ve found it delightful, if a bit Hollywood-self-indulgent, which I find myself in the mood to forgive given the long acting history of most of the cast.)

A trilogy to take you through time

I just wrapped up the Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy, written in the 1920s by Norwegian author Sigrid Undset. It’s long, complex, and spans many generations and years - “epic”, some might say - and at times, I struggled to understand what was happening, from the geopolitics and religious customs of medieval Norway…to the unfamiliar names.

(I actually found myself whispering the names of newly-introduced characters out loud, hoping to ingrain them in my memory, but I’m pretty sure I was pronouncing them all wrong and half the time I’d forget who the person was the next time they showed up on the page anyway…)

All that said, in the end, these were books worth staying (and occasionally struggling) with. As I wrote last week, I’ve been grappling with a bit of content overload lately, both as a reader/listener and a writer/creator.

One antidote, for me, is to develop the mental discipline needed to stay with a longer work from beginning to end, whether it’s a fluffy rom-com (I’ve been reading plenty of those too!) or a longer, more challenging piece of literature. If you like books that feature: cold climates, religious history, medieval lifestyles, depictions of imperfect, flawed people and the messes they get themselves into, redemption stories, motherhood stories, strong female characters, and lots of umlauts and diacritics¹, this one is worth a long, slow read.

Speaking of slow…

As another antidote to content overload, I’ve introduced a slower cadence to my creative work, reflected in the new format of both this newsletter and The Tea’s Made podcast.

Starting today, I’ll be publishing two podcast episodes per month. The first, published on the first of the month, will be a seasonally-inspired forward look at the projects and creative pursuits I have planned for the month ahead. The second, a more topical episode, will usually feature a guest interview and will publish on the 15th of the month.

My writing here will follow the same cadence with a post on or around the 1st and 15th, plus occasional essays as they come up. What will that mean for The Sunday Steep, my weekly newsletter? At this point, I’m not sure. This monthly newsletter will mimic many of its elements, and I am tempted to let that be enough.

I love the idea of a long, slow read that you can return to again and again throughout the month as you feel inspired to, rather than feeling obligated to keep up with a new post every week. What do you think?

Supporting The Tea’s Made….

As I decided a few months back, for now all my writing here is free - but if you want to support my work there are several ways you can do that:

• Buy me a pot of tea with a one-time donation. I’m trying out the service BuyMeACoffee, but Venmo also works well!

• Click my links. I often use affiliate links when I share products I love, and will earn a small commission if you buy.

• Buy my stuff. While I don’t charge for subscriptions right now, I do sell products, and the revenue supports my creative work. The BevyBox, a customized gift box for tea lovers and creative souls, lovingly curated by myself, is available to order now (use code TEA15 for 15% off). And my book is available for pre-order on Amazon and at Bookshop.org. Pre-orders are enormously helpful for the success of a new book.

• Leave a comment, share my stuff with a friend, or reply to my email and say hello. I’ve been publishing my writing for nearly twenty-five years, and while earning money is what makes it possible to prioritize it, knowing that it’s making an impact on you is the biggest reward.

And whether or not you ever do any of the above, I appreciate you simply being here, reading, listening, and sharing space with me here. We’re in a particularly contentious and divided time in American civic and public life right now, but I want you to know that whoever you are, you are welcome.

Another note about BevyBox…

You’ve got just a few weeks left to pre-order a holiday 2024 BevyBox from Bevy, my tea and craft company! The BevyBox is a gift box hand-curated by me and featuring tea, craft supplies and other special goodies, plus a copy of BEVY, a lovely, illustrated print magazine, featuring articles about tea, creativity, connection and more with journal pages and places for you to make notes.

Here are a few sneak peeks of BEVY to entice you.

Use the code TEA15 at BevyBox.co for 15% off your BevyBox.

That’s it for this month’s Journal, friends. Again, for a deeper dive into some of the above, listen to this week’s episode of The Tea’s Made podcast.

Check back for a new episode and article on November 15, when I’ll be sharing some of my plans for the holiday season as well as talking to

Kristin Haakenson

, creator of Hearthstone Fables, about the liturgical calendar: what is it, what is its historical significance, and how can we let this way of viewing the year inform our holiday celebrations and add richness to the entire year?

1. The little accent marks, squiggles, etc you’ll see above vowels in some languages - I had to look it up to find out what they’re called, and now you know, too!