Thirsty Thursday: Reader Dana's Birthday

It's Thirsty Thursday on Reader Dana's Birthday so you know what that means...I feature her favorite drink!

Let's just say Reader Dana has a lot of favorite drinks. In fact, if I was drafting someone to be my drinking partner in a female pairs drinking competition, my #1 pick would be Dana. 

I asked Dana for her favorite drink of the moment and she said, "spicy jalapeño anything drinks."

Well, here you go. In honor of Dana's birthday - a Spicy Jalapeño Maragrita from Costal Living Magazine!

 Spicy Jalapeño Margarita

1 ½ oz Tanteo Jalepeño Tequila
½ oz Triple Sec
½ oz Simple Syrup
½ oz Lime Juice

1. Combine ingredients with ice into a shaker and shake.
2. Strain onto a rocks glass filled with fresh ice.
3. Garnish with Jalapeño Slice with Lime Spiked and Mint Top

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Five Shots for Friday

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• First there was Birchbox, then there were 5,000 other kinds of box subscription sites.  But this one caught my eye – The Period Store. A special box filled with chocolate and meds right before your time of the month (via Small Girls

• What’s on my next birthday list? A “Whip” car from Kennywood for my living room…

•  If that sells out, a swan pedal boat. Wouldn’t that look fabulous sailing down the Mon?

• The latest internet photo meme: Koala-ing.

• A beer for Brady – who is a huge fan of The Pittsburgh Left. 

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Keeping it Cool

While enjoying lunch outside today, I received a text from the hubs that said "It's summer." If you call high 70's and a slight tan line from sitting outside for 30 minutes summer...well then, today it's summer in Pittsburgh!

As the temps rise, I’m really into a number of the beverage transportation items to keep drinks cold. These cooler totes are super cute and I think I may just snag one of these to keep my bottles looking cool and staying cool this summer.

·         Lilly Pulitzer Insulated Beach Cooler – this pretty pouch comes with a bottle opener! Heck yes!

·         Volcom – I know I don’t own a skateboard or BMX bike, but I wouldn’t mind owning this.

·         Kate Spade Wine Picnic Tote – uh huh. Want. 

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Brandi Does Bourbon: Maker's Mark Cupcakes

By now you know about my wine club. But what you may not know is that while I’m wine-ing, Brady is drinking bourbon with the boys. While the details of the affairs of the bourbon club are under lock and key, I do know that the guys take turns hosting. Last weekend was Brady’s turn, so I made a little treat in honor of the Kentucky Derby and my dad’s birthday – Maker’s Mark Bourbon Cupcakes.

These things are GOOD. They taste almost muffin-like with a thicker consistency than the usual cake. If I make these again (maybe in the fall), I’m thinking of adding in raisins.

Oh and this recipe calls for molasses. That stuff is no joke! It’s way stickier than honey and it’s not tasty by itself.

I’m not typically a fan of a cream cheese frosting, but I did enjoy this version that includes cinnamon. For the full recipe, visit the Maker’s Mark website here. 

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Bringing Online Instagram Photos Offline

Do you Instagram? If so, what do you do with your Instagram photos? Keep them in your online gallery and never print them like the majority of Instagram users?

If you are looking for a way to take your online Instagram photos and bring them to life, here are some ways you can do just that.

·         Prinstagram: This site allows you to turn your pictures into prints, posters, calendars, stickers and tiny books.

·         Stickygram: Make your photos into magnets!

·         CanvasPop: Print your photos on a canvas

·         ImageSnap: One of the more creative ideas I’ve seen, ImageSnap prints on tiles. How cool would it be to insert your photo tiles onto an at-home bar?!

·         Posterfuse: Another site that can turn your pics into a poster. This could be a cool high school graduation gift…turning the grad’s pics into a poster for their college dorm room. Oh and it’s only $22.

I actually started to digital scrapbook and used a number of my Instagram photos on the first and last pages of the book to highlight some of our travels and meals throughout the year!  

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Rockin' Rocca Wine

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The winning wine at the last Winey Women meeting was from Rocca Family Vineyards. As you can tell from my lips in recent pictures, I’ve been dabbling more in red wine, thanks to former reader Lindsay, but have been sticking with a Cab. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Rocca I sipped was a Merlot!

The Roccas, Mary and Eric, are a former dentist and (current) physician that decided to open a winery. I can certainly relate to their dream!

I tried the 2008 Merlot. While I’ll tell you it’s “good” and “ doesn't stick to your throat,” the real winemakers on the website will tell you that this Merlot “… is a beautiful example of the elegance and seamlessness that made so many of us fall in love with a great Merlot in the first place. While it certainly reflects the depth and rich, sumptuous fruit of the 2008 vintage, this bottling expresses those characterizes with exceptional balance and refinement.”

Not only do the Roccas have a tasty Merlot, but they've also produced an award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon.

The only negative to the Rocca is the price…$45.00. Save this one for fancy dinners – not weekend pounders ; )

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What's Your Wine's Profile?

In my last post, I mentioned that I was hosting the next Winey Women meeting and that I had a special “social” theme.

I can now reveal that my theme was…WINEBOOK!

Each club meeting, we each discuss the PROFILE of the wine that we bring, so I had an idea to create Facebook-profile-like boards where each member could fill out information about their wine.

For this night, I asked everyone to bring a wine that was someone’s first and last name. At the party, each women went through the wine’s name, origin, bottle date and most importantly alcohol content!

During the party, we used LIKE fingers to rate our wines. At the end of the night, I handed out LIKE stickers and the wine with the most thumbs up won a prize.

After almost 20 bottles of wine, we then held a little dance party with bedazzled wooden spoons Shot of Mom made for us to use a faux microphones!

Here’s how I pulled off the Winebook party details.

Wine Book Boards

·         You can print the document below on 8x10 paper

o   Note that the “Wine From” area is for the name of the person that brought the wine

·         Then, if you take it to Staples of FedEx Office, they will print a large poster (18x24) in black and white for under $3.00 each! Color costs about $21.99 each. My Wine Club didn’t mind that I skimped for them ; )

·         I then taped each paper to a corkboard while we wrote, but if you have flat walls, that could certainly work. Just make sure that the Sharpie doesn’t leak through the paper on to your wall.

Like Stickers

·         I printed the Like symbols on sticker paper for people to “like” a wine at the end of the night

Like Sticks

·         To make the sticks, I bought blue and white foam paper and sticks

·         I think printed out a large Like symbol and used it as a template to cut the blue part

·         Then, I cut out the white part and hot glued it to the blue. Finally, I glued the symbols to the stick so that they could be flipped to like and not like a wine

Oh and please don't suck Zuckerberg on me for trademark infringements. This was all in good fun! 

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Say My Name: Wine Named After People

(I love you Paperless Post)

This weekend I’m hosting the next meeting of the Winey Women. I’ve created a top secret theme that I’ll share with you all after the party (the invitation copy reveals some clues).

On the invitation, I asked everyone to bring a bottle of wine that is someone’s name. I did a little research to serve as thought starters and there are actually a lot of wines out there named after a person. Here are a few I found and of course I’ll learn more this Saturday!

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·       Robert Mondavi: This dude is super important in the US wine world because he created marketing strategies and technical improvements to the wine making process that brought worldwide recognition for the wines of Napa Valley (thanks, Wikipedia!). Bob, as I call him, was the one that pushed for wine makers to label wines by grape variety rather than generically. Oh and Bob was a frat boy – he’s a member of Phi Sigma Kappa. Maybe they should think of that next time they reach for the Franzia for frat parties.  

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·       Francis Ford & Sofia Coppola Wines: You likely know of this father, daughter duo. Both are famous Hollywood directors. Francis has a rather large collection of award hardware for movies like The Godfather, but what you may not know is that he released Peggy Sue Got Married, which stared his nephew Nicolas Cage! With George Lucas, he worked on Captian EO featuring Michael Jackson. Sofia is pretty rad too – she won an Oscar for Lost in Translation and was the first American woman nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. And she made the movie Marie Antoinette – which was rather awesome.

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·       Charles Shaw: Chuck’s name is on the line of extremely cheap wine sold at Trader Joe’s. Fondly referred to as Two Buck Chuck because of its $1.99 price tag, in 2013 the retail price went up to $2.49. The company that makes Charles Shaw is actually headed by Fred Franzia – formerly of Franzia Brothers wines…and I know you’ve heard of Franzia!  The urban legend is that this wine is so cheap because of a bitter divorce between Charles and his wife, so she set the price cheap to tarnish his name. However, my research shows that the wine is really cheap due to an overabundance of California grapes. And the fact that the company is run by a Franzia!

Do you have a favorite wine named after a person? 

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DIY Fail: Kate Spade Bow Cardigan

Lately I feel like my craft projects have turned out a little less craftacular that I hoped.  

When I first saw THIS Kate Spade bow cardigan, I thought – I can make that.  

So I bought an Old Navy cardi and some ribbon and went to work. Unfortunately, it turned out a bit awful.

(Image on the left: Kate Spade) 

Let me state a few facts:

·         This cardigan with the black trim was on sale – so I bought it for the potential craft fail

·         Michael’s was having a sale on ribbon – this meant that the larger size black ribbon was all gonesies

·         I did NOT glue the ribbons – I pinned them on, so the cardi can be saved/re-done

My step by step instructions if you want to attempt this

·         Purchase supplies

Supplies:

·         Cardi: $12.00 on sale at Old Navy

·         Ribbon: $2.50ish at Michael’s

·         Used pins and sewing materials from craft box

·         TOTAL: $14.50

·         Cut ribbon and test out some sizes of bows – the size is used here was about 8 inches

·         Start making bows

·         Pin the bows to the cardi – don’t sew them first so that you can get the spacing right

·         Sew the bows

Sew simple, right?! (pun intended).

Final Verdict: I’m going to skip the purchase and given that I didn’t sew the bows, I think I’m going to take them off and just wear the cardi plain. 

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Yep. My Feelings Exactly.

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Happy Freaking Friday! 

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