My sister-in-law passed away last September and it fell to my husband and I to clean out her house. It was daunting and sad and we came across dozens of china sets. Some were small, but many had 50-to-100+ pieces neither of us knew existed in the house.

I did keep a few individual pieces, but we didn’t have room in our house and knew I didn’t need to add to my collection of tea “stuff”. We also wanted to keep those larger sets together thinking, we’d be able to sell them.

There was one small set of a coffee pot, sugar bowl, creamer pitcher, and a lovely tray that kept drawing my attention each trip we made back to the house. I moved them back and forth multiple times to the “give away” pile or set them aside for me to take home.

Once we learned the sad lack of value these sets actually had out there on the market, and that it was going to be much more difficult to even give them away, I decided that set had to come with me…where it would be loved and used as it was intended.

I searched for which china pattern it was and discovered it’s called “Bridesmaid” from Royal Albert in England with pink & white, roses, and gold trim. I thought my Summertime Rose teacup matched it well. A pot of Rose Pouchong tea from Fortnum & Mason seemed appropriate for the “rose pattern” theme.

This past week, on a cloudy day, I decided to enjoy that set with some homemade cinnamon coffee cake. I used the coffee pot as a tea pot, however. It was a lovely pour!

I didn’t use the sugar bowl, but the creamer pitcher is very pretty and the tray held two generous portions of the coffee cake.

As with the other pieces I kept, whenever I use them, I’ll always think of Nancy and know she’d be delighted that I have them and am taking care of them.