I Made My Kid a Travel Tea Set, Including A Homemade Tea Wallet, and She Loved It!

Hooray for gifts--especially gifts with homemade components--that turn out to be a hit!

My older kid is sooooo hard to pick out gifts for. She's nearly as hard as her dad, and he is the worst person to pick out gifts for that I have ever met in my life. Seriously, the kid doesn't feel the need to own books. She doesn't like new clothes unless it's something she specifically thinks she needs--and she never thinks she needs anything. She's a minimalist in general, so any kind of acquisition of new stuff is rarely her favorite.

Fortunately, she's also my adventure kid, always up for a new experience, so if I'm out of ideas, just about anything travel or activity-centered is bound to be a pretty good fit.

Hence the travel tea set! 

The kid already owns this electric kettle that she uses in her college dorm room, but I think this gift would also work fine for a college kid without an electric kettle, because they can always get hot water from the school cafeteria. 

The nicest store-bought part of the travel tea set is this travel mug. I've had one for maybe four years now, and I can assure you that it is the BEST travel mug ever. It's completely leak-free, even four years of heavy use and lots of (hand)washing later, and it holds its temperature perfectly. I've never tried it with anything cold, but back when I subbed I'd make myself a cafe mocha in this mug at 6am, then pull it out of my bag sometime between 1 and 2pm and have to leave the lid off for a few minutes to cool it down enough to drink. If I forgot it in my bag and took a little test sip the next morning at 6am, it would still be warm enough to drink. So I think it'll be perfect for a kid who's got to trek through an Ohio winter to her 8:30am literature class, and isn't done until after her 4:00 science lab.

I didn't get very creative with the tea selection, because I wasn't sure how adventurous a busy college student would want to be with her travel teas, but you could be really fun and adventurous with it. I even shopped around for a tea of the month subscription set for a minute, but eh, at this point in time I think she's fine with Celestial Seasonings.

Fun fact: did you know that Celestial Seasonings is sort of low-key a cult?

My own personal favorite part of the travel tea set, though, is the tea wallet that I made!

I followed this tutorial nearly to the letter, only subbing in stash bias tape instead of making it as the tutorial calls for, and it turned out so cute. This way, the kid can put hot water in her travel mug whenever she's got the opportunity, but wait to actually steep the tea until she's ready for it.

I'm already dreading sending these kids back to school, sigh. Spring semester always feels SO long right at the start, knowing the next school break isn't until mid-March, and I know I'm going to feel so lonely slogging through the coldest and gloomiest part of the year without my daughters. But I do kind of like the idea of the kid going through her busy days nurtured by a nice, hot, comforting beverage that I've managed to provide for her from the next state over. 

I just need to figure out what I'm going to nurture myself with when I'm missing them the most!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!