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FEATURED TEAROOM
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SOPHIE’S TEA ROOM &
GIFTS
This month I had the opportunity to visit
Sophie’s Tea Room in Tama, IA. The
drive out there from Des Moines only took
about 1 hr and 12 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised how
fast the road trip took. From Des Moines, once I headed north on U.S. Hwy
65, which later turned into State Hwy 330 and later, exiting to take Hwy 30 into Tama, the drive
was relatively straightforward.
Having arrived in Tama, I found
Sophie’s Tea Room located at the corner
of 7th
Street and Hwy 63, in a quiet
residential
neighborhood. It was picturesque (see pictures).
This historic Queen Anne
Victorian home, built in 1885, was converted
into a tearoom about three years ago.
Michelle Evans (right), started Sophie’s Tea Room and Gifts business after her
experiences going to local tearooms.
 Entering
the tearoom, one can smell a hint of the scented candles
wafting through the air. The 120 plus year
old newel post decoration, Sophie (right), greets you
as you walk into the tearoom. She was named
thus in the 1880s by the original builder of
the house, Rube Coffin, and she became the namesake of the tearoom.
Sophie’s Tea Room is open all year round; Monday to Friday,
from 10 am to 3 pm with lunch being served from
11:30 am to 1:30 pm. The menus change daily. Lunch price starts at
$5.95. Please call to find out what the menu
is for that day. Other times are by
appointment and reservations are preferred. There are two main rooms where
lunch is served. Sophie’s can seat up
to groups of 50 people or more and has two floors of gifts. The
gifts are also reasonably priced, and according to
Michelle, below their suggested retail price.
Among the products that the gift shop sells
are the full line of Burt’s Bees All
Natural Skin Care Products, Colonial of Home
scented candles, hand painted candleholders,
various arts and crafts work, music CDs and
much, much more.
An
annual event that Sophie’s Tea Room
& Gifts have had since it opened is their Mother’s
Day Fashion Show. This year's event happens to fall on Saturday, May 11. Michelle has two seating
for lunch, one at 11:15 am and the other is
at 12:45 pm. At the time of the interview,
she was already fully booked for the first
seating, and the second was going pretty
fast. If anyone is interested, please call for
reservations.
Sophie’s is truly an elegant and
spacious tearoom. The lunch is reasonable and the gift shop
have items that have been beautifully selected and
reasonable in price as well. I find it
hard to describe in words, the tea room experiences that I have
been to because it is hard to do so. I do feel, however, that
one definitely
seem to enter a place where time just seem to stand still.
The only thing you have to do is enjoy and savor the quiet moment that you
manage to get, perhaps even if it’s only a
lunch break, or a browse through the gift shop. The hectic world that
we live in can indeed wait. And this is definitely what I feel Sophie's has
to
offer.
I
hope that you can find time to visit the
tearoom and experience the serene environment
that is at Sophie’s Tea Room &
Gifts, 610 McClellan St. Tama, IA 52339. Tel
641.484.5004. For more information on the
tearoom, please check into our website at
www.tearoomsonline.com.
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SOMETHING TO PONDER
UPON
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Note: I found this among some
newsletters that I receive and thought I'd pass it on. The message
that one gets from it differs from person to person, of
course. For me, it is appropriate with Spring and
renewal and knowing that we do make a difference.
THE DAFFODIL
PRINCIPLE
Several times my daughter had telephoned to say,
"Mother, you must come see the daffodils before they
are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive
from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. "I will come next
Tuesday," I promised, a little reluctantly, on her
third call.
Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised,
and so I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's
house and hugged and greeted my grandchildren, I said,
"Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible
in the clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world
except you and these children that I want to see bad enough
to drive another inch!" My daughter smiled calmly and
said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother."
"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it
clears, and then I'm heading for home!" I assured her.
"I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick
up my car." "How far will we have to drive?"
I winced. "Just a few blocks," Carolyn said.
"I'll drive. I'm used to this." After several
minutes in the car, I had to ask, "Where are we going?
This isn't the way to the garage!" "We're going to
my garage the long way," Carolyn smiled, "by way
of the daffodils."
"Carolyn," I said sternly, "please turn
around." "It's all right, Mother, I promise. You
will never forgive yourself if you miss this
experience." After about twenty minutes, we turned onto
a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far
side of the church, I saw a hand-lettered sign that read,
"Daffodil Garden."
We got out of the car and each took a child's hand, and I
followed Carolyn down the path. Then, we turned a corner of
the path, and I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most
glorious sight. It looked as though someone had taken a
great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak
and slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling
patterns-great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white,
lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow. Each
different-colored variety was planted as a group so that it
swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique
hue. There were five acres of flowers. "But who has
done this?" I asked Carolyn.
"It's just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She
lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn
pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and
modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the
house. On the patio, we saw a poster. "Answers to the
Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline.
The first answer was a simple one."50,000 bulbs,"
it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one
woman. Two hands, two feet, and very little brain." The
third answer was, "Began in 1958."
There it was. The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment
was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom
I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had
begun--one bulb at a time--to bring her vision of beauty and
joy to an obscure mountain top. Still, just planting one
bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world. This
unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she
lived. She had created something of ineffable
(indescribable) magnificence, beauty, and inspiration..
The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the
greatest principles of celebration. That is, learning to
move toward our goals and desires one step at a time--often
just one baby-step at a time--and learning to love the
doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we
multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily
effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent
things. We can change the world.
"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn.
"What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a
wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked
away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years.
Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"
My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual
direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said. "It's
so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The
way to make this a lesson of celebration, instead of a cause
for regret, is to only ask, "How can I put this to use
today?"
- Author Unknown
===============
Today's Joke
===============
Brought to you by
http://www.bestpricecomputers.ltd.uk/humour/
There Was Life Before the Computer
An application was for employment
A
program was a TV show
A
cursor used profanity
A
keyboard was a piano!
Memory was something that you lost with
age
A
CD was a bank account!
And if you had a broken disk,
It would hurt when you found out!
Compress was something you did to garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for awhile!
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