Our Coffee Lovin' Home!

We love coffee in this house. Always have. Always will. Any kind of coffee; brewed, espresso, iced, hot, whatever it may be in any way that it comes. Both my husband and I have this great appreciation for the beverage, and we have the coffee cups to prove it. The other day I read a post on Facebook that inspired me to write about my love for coffee. It was: "Need to ask my Starbucks fan friends. . . what's the deal with the excitement for the red cups?" and my heart immediately skipped a bit . . . SERIOUSLY!!! If she has to ask . . . then she just doesn't get it! I LOVE the red cups as much as I love the holiday that accompanies them (and you already know how much I love the holiday).

So this morning I went to pour my cup of coffee, thinking about about the cups that we have . . . and the location of where our cups are. We have "nice" cups that go with our everyday dishes. However, it seems every morning I reach for some other type of cup . . . one that has a meaning and tells a story in my life. And boy oh boy, we sure have alot of coffee cups. We have a large cabinet of cups right next to the sink.

Then we have cups in front of the wine glasses. Now, I enjoy a nice glass of wine from time to time. But you can see how important the "coffee" is to us if we have run out of space in the coffee cabinet and now store cups in the wine cabinet. Yes, we are loving coffee here.

We also have a really amazing collection of Stabuck City mugs (I think we have 10 or 12 of them right now) from pretty much all over the country. These cups are AWESOME (big in size with a really nice handle). Most of them have been given to us by my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. Our collection of these city mugs has gotten so large, that we have had to move them to the sippy cup shelf . . . ah, well. You do what you gotta do with what you have, right? I hope to someday have a kitchen large enough to have a number of cabinets just for our coffee cups alone. Perhaps we will have glass doors on the front of it, and lighted from within. Ah, I can see it already. How cool will that be?

While every single cup I have tells a special story, here are my absolute very favorite cups. Left to right, they are:

Cup #1: Amore, which was given to me (by Phil, of course) for Valentine's Day many years ago. The handle is a heart and I just love this cup, as much as the sentiment that comes with it. I find that I grab this cup most of the time when Phil is out of town for work. Helps me to feel closer to him. (I'm using it today, as a matter of fact. Sigh.)

Cup #2: Yes . . . a RED STARBUCKS CUP, reflecting that the Holiday Season is upon us. I use this cup throughout the Christmas Season, and it just warms my heart. TRIPLE LOVE IT!

Cup #3: The next cup, with its cool green color and J. Kasper Company advertisement, is part of a set of 4 mugs that I picked up in Saugatuck, Michigan some 13 years ago. It was right before I was about to move out of my parents house, and these 4 mugs were going to be my "I'm an adult, not living in my parents home any longer, come on over to MY place and drink a cup of coffee with me" coffee cups. Shortly after moving out, I remember sitting down in my "own place" on a Thursday night, sipping coffee out of this cup, and watching Friends on TV. When, low and behold, MONICA from FRIENDS was sipping coffee OUT OF THE SAME EXACT COFFEE CUP!!!! SERIOUSLY!! (I SO love these cups!)

Cup #4: The Magic Bean Coffee Shop cup. This is the place that probably started it all. It was a coffee shop in Tinley Park, Illinois, where Phil and I went often . . . long before we were Mr. & Mrs. The owner was this young guy named Tim. He was so smart and had such passion for this business. Phil and I would sit there and listen to Tim talk about coffee, coffee beans, roasting beans to various levels, the secrets of what made a great cup of coffee, and all the other things Tim liked to talk about (he was the kind of guy who liked to talk, you know? Perfect for owning a coffee shop.) We brought our family there. We brought our friends there. We just loved it. But at some point, we kind of got away from going there (life just happened, I guess). After a few months we decided to drive by, when we discovered it had closed. That was a sad day. We often wonder what ever happened to Tim. I'm sure he's talking about something else with that same amount of passion that he had for coffee.

So there you have it, our Coffee Lovin' Home . . . in photos and words. Thanks for listening. . . now go pour yourself a "Cup o'Joe" and enjoy it!

SIDE NOTE: Just looked up the meaning of "Cup o'Joe", as I was interested in knowing the history of that saying. Take a look here if you are interested in finding out, too.