June 2024 Stationery Subscription Box: A First Look at Henry Winter & Co.

 I wanted to talk with you about the next Tea + Toast Club box which will be coming out in early June. This one has really and truly got me excited. It’s like child level kind of excitement. Mostly I think that has to do with the fact that it’s taking me back to my childhood, and to all of the things that would excite my imagination. 



As a child I was obsessed with cute characters in people’s clothing, doing peopley things. I would line all of my stuffed toys up on my bed (and I had a few, let me just say!), and pretend they were characters from a story. We’d have picnics and tea parties and some of them wore over-sized, and sometimes undersized, doll’s clothes. They looked a sight, but I thought they were the cutest little group of friends ever.

Every night I’d promise to let them all sleep with me in my yellow wooden bed, but every night I couldn’t follow through. I’d carefully move each one, and promise that tomorrow night would be the night. Those poor little buggers hung on to the promises of an 8 year old child - and, well, they are still hanging on;) because I don’t think I could cope with the clutter in my bed but I’d hoped to overcome that one day. Much to my husband’s disappointment, I have still not overcome it, and he is given a short cuddle time before I start getting edgy and needing my personal space in our queen sized bed.

Please move over, darling.

OK, that’s enough.

Get your leg off me!

I’m too hot!

Listen, I can’t handle this!

On it goes, until he, in a slight huff, reluctantly rolls onto his side and hugs his pillow to sleep. Poor Pete;)

Back to the fascination with cute characters and human traits. I blame Enid Blyton for this infatuation. Also A.A Milne, and Kenneth Grahame. The characters inside their books would light me up. I wanted to know them. I wanted to stumble across their little houses deep in the woods, or at the edge of a creek, or inside an old mossy log. I looked for them, whenever I could, and I would create my own little mouse and caterpillar havens at the side of our house, where the sun didn’t manage to reach. There was often a little bit of moss and a damp nook or cranny there, where I could create little spots for the creatures to live. Hoping they’d move in and take up a lease. Matchbox beds with bits of Mum’s fabric scraps for blankets, and wool for pillows. I was ever hopeful that I would find someone curled up in there someday. Even to this day, whenever I come across a mossy little spot amongst the ferns, I always think: fairies might live here. Yep, even at 52, I’m hopeful. You just never know;)

So, to the June box. This one is called Henry Winter and Co. Today I thought I’d give you a little sneak peek into who Henry Winter and Co are. Obviously Tea + Toast Club subscribers will get the full picture when they open the box in June, but for now I shall sprinkle some crumbs along the path, and hope you feel the excitement of my childhood mind taking the reins of this delightful stationery box of goodies.

Henry and his friends have a community garden down the lane, across from the old church in the town of Wild Wood,  where they live.

In the spring, summer and autumn, Henry and Co (aka his friends!) spend all of their Sundays in the community garden. Tending carrots, staking the dahlias, pruning rose hips, and trying to keep away the pretty, but menacing cabbage moths that continually raid the brassica seedlings.

But it is the wintertime that the friends love the most. That is when the magic happens. The winter house is the hub of the community garden, and it is the placewhere they plant seeds to raise during the winter months, and where they meet for cups of tea,  lamingtons, and cinnamon scrolls with lashings of butter.

It is this little potting shed, with its glass walls and old wooden bench filled with tiny terracotta pots, that gives Henry and his friends a place to chat and sip and nibble and dream up all of the fantastic things they will do in the spring time.

Behind those cosy, sunlit glass walls, the group of friends talk about their week - the hard times, the happy times, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits in this tiny, warm space right in the middle of the garden, and so amongst the garden planning and seed sorting, is always the gentle chitter chatter that keeps these friends close, and their cups brimming over.

Alrighty, well that’s it for now, stay tuned for more cuteness next time.