Honey? I'm Home!

It was time to meet one of my dearest friends and have lunch at our favorite girly place. 

Honey Heaven is a local shop and tearoom here in the Ozarks that I adore. I heart honey--and I love the rooms at Honey Heaven stuffed with painted furniture and antiques, fat bee motifs, and the cutest gifts and goodies (like chubby painted tea pots and tins of bee bar lotion). I have actually gotten craft ideas from their gift shop items (I'm known to troll places for ideas)--and I'm thinking of making a series of bee embroidered pillows to sell here. I wish I would have snapped a pic of the actual tearoom areas! I had bees on the brain! Guess I'll take more pics on my next visit. 

Honey mustard chips

Sharon and I always look forward to the honey-mustard chips they serve while you're at your table trying to catch up on the latest gossip and peruse the menu. We both love the Garden of Eden Quiche--filled with roasted veggies. Sharon got it again this time. So yummy! And of course you always get a salad and a mini muffin on your plate. I also had raspberry ice tea--and if that wasn't heaven...Sharon ordered the honey cream cake for dessert. Oh my. It all tasted fresh and delish.

Sharon next to the bees in the Honey Room!

Me and the bees!

 After we caught up on everything going on in our lives and finished off a great lunch, we went to their special Honey Room in the back of the shop...where a hive of real honey bees live (their glass hive is connected to a pipe in the wall that lets them exit and enter from the outside as they please). We have a lot concern for honey bees right now, because lately their very existence has been threatened by pests and diseases worldwide. We need our bees! These busy guys and their queen are fun to watch in a glass hive.

Honey Heaven's real beehive.

There's nothing like shopping in a real honey shop where there are shelves and shelves of local honey in a variety of flavors, honey based salad dressings, and my daughter's favorite treat: honey sticks. I was on the lookout for a big honey bear of Honey Heaven's own Orange Blossom Honey. I wanted the large one this time, because we completely used up a small container of it already--using it all winter in mugs and mugs of hot tea and piped onto flaky biscuits. 

Honey has a lot of benefits...so I thought I'd share a few with you.

• Honey (depending on the quality of its nectar and pollen sources) contains vitamins B1, B2, C, B6, B5 and B3. Now I think that should be written more like, Vitamin Bee-1, but maybe I should embroider that.
• Honey is good for your skin, and attracts water.
• Honey helps sore throats.
• Honey can soothe a mild tummy ache.
• Honey has been known to be effective in the treatment of ulcers.
• Many bee-lieve honey is the most wholesome sweetener.

So this is why bears have good skin, never cough or complain about their tummies! ;)

I forgot to pick up one of my other favorite items, while I was there, which is a good tin of bee lotion. Very nice to use on dry heels in the winter and rub on your cuticles when you've been gardening and have had your hands in water a lot!

I found a photo of a fat bee from my cutting flower garden last year. One of the reasons I plant the cutting flowers, like zinnias, right next to the tomatoes, herbs and other veggies is, of course, to attract the bees for a fuller and healthier garden bounty.

I hope you have a dreamy little shop near you, like Honey Heaven, to have a tearoom lunch once in a while and a little bit of shopping--all good for healthy eating, writing, dreaming and stitching!