Tea With Me: 2020!?

Hi my fellow tea lovers,

I am currently starting off this blog post in class at school (sorry doing my maths homework wink wink.) First off can I say this year has been utterly WHACK and not completely in a bad way. I am in year 9 and this was my first year starting at boarding school. After 8 weeks we were sent home due to COVID and I was not complaining AT ALL. 

Idk if it was just me but when quarantine first started I had high hopes of myself and was expecting to be super productive. Well  let me tell you that was not the case for AT LEAST the first month. I kinda forget the whole month of April mainly because I spent the majority of my time on tik tok and instagram whilst drinking copious amounts of herbal tea. I never thought anything of it, tea was just part of my everyday life. I didn't go a day without it. I would go online shopping for tea, research the benefits of tea and mix spices and herbs to make my own quirky ‘Sienna’ concoctions. The more time I spent at home, the more tea was consumed. 

Each night I would make my family sit around and test tea blends that I had combined that day, during the day I would spend half my online lessons sharing my new found knowledge of tea to mum, I was so oblivious to the wonders it was doing for me and my wellbeing. 

One of the many tea-testing nights I said as a passing comment  ‘lol I should have my own tea business!’ THE PENNY DROPPED...I needed to have my own range of herbal tea, welcome to the world SPILL THE TEA, we love you so much already!

The more online lessons learning about pythagoras theorem or simultaneous equations, the more I realised how unnecessary school was for me at this point in time (disclaimer: if you understand/like pythagoras etc im super happy for you...I wish I had half your brains!) From the 50 minutes I would waste in a lesson I could have been researching, creating and testing new blends or contacting suppliers and graphic designers. I was eager to get stuff happening and I realised how deprived our generation is of access to genuine health and a good tea that isn't so boring or marketed purely to a mature audience. As you may already know I do love making some aesthetic pinterest boards and so, naturally, I started one for my visions for a tea business. I scrolled through the images on google, pinterest, instagram EVERYTHING and nothing screamed, fun, young, exciting, new all of which I would associate with my love of tea. This needed to change asap. 

The name ‘Spill the Tea’ came naturally, two things I love doing is drinking tea and spilling tea. If you don't know the phrase ‘spill the tea’ it generally means ‘tell me what's been happening’, what's news ‘(tea)’ in your life. My friends and family all LOVE to spill tea and what better way to combine my major passions, talking, drinking tea and wellbeing into one cute little cylinder. From here Spill the Tea was born. Obviously it wasn't that quick but when I pitched my idea to my family they were on board and because my mum was home with me most of the time she practically turned into my personal assistant, I was constantly bouncing ideas off her and we both came to the agreeance that tea for teenagers was a must.

Anyway, back to school. I was scheduled to go back to school, completely locked in for 3 weeks. Tbh, school was becoming an inconvenience to the innovation of Spill the Tea. The thought of having to put ‘Spill the Tea’ on hold whilst I was at school wasn't really steaming my veggies but I knew it had to be done. 2 days later I was sent back home, I was sick....after a week at home I went back to school, then I got sick again. We then had an online school week and when I got back to school, once again I got sick. I'm not talking cough cough not actually sick...I’m talking genuine lowkey could be corona sick (it wasn't, dont stress!) Another time I became very ill as I had consumed gluten (I'm coeliac so that wasn't very fun!) I started to notice a pattern, when I was at school I wasn't eating the nutritious food I would at home, I didn't have the drive nor time to exercise as I usually would and was lucky to have one cup of tea per week (this was a catastrophe!) My skin went down hill and, whilst I was there, I never had any energy, motivation and felt I had lost my usual happy self. What the heck! Now i'm not claiming that the school made me sick but what i'm saying is the more I was there, the more sick I’d get and the more kilometres were building up on mum and dads cars...in contrast (lol my english teacher would be proud), being home I would thrive and have all the energy in the world, I was in my own routine and fuelling my body with goodness (goodness=herbal tea).

Whilst I spent this time at home I was working with my graphic designer (who is VERY talented may I add) in creating my website. My prep time at school (when I was there) was spent writing blogs, making pinterest boards for the website photoshoot and finding any inspiration as to why I should complete a PEEL paragraph about Romeo and Juliet.

Here we are today, I'm home, yet again...sipping tea and soaking up all the sunshine on this beautiful spring day. I have found where I need to be and right now that is home, thinking up astronomical ideas for my new little baby ‘Spill the Tea.’ 

Although this year has had its ups and downs, I would like to consider 2020 as a positive experience so far for myself personally. If corona hadn't happened I would have never had the time to launch, what seems to be a dream come true, my own range of herbal tea. 

That's the tea in my life at the moment...more coming soon I promise!

Hope you enjoyed my mini rant,

Sending love always,

Sienna xx