Birthday Booze!

It's birthday season around here! If you can believe it,all three members of our little family have a birthday in the month of January.  We just call it birthday month. To celebrate my birthday since we didn't get around to making our 10th cake of the month we made:

Boozey Birthday Cake Shakes

1 Pint of Ice Cream

2 Shots of Bourbon

Whipped Cream
Food Color (if desired)

Sprinkles

Could we have any more balloons?

Now, the thing about this particular drink is that it's the last one we'll be enjoying 'till March 1.  Boo! Hiss! We're going to make it a Dry February and try and work off some of that birthday cake, holiday weight and booze.  So if no one has any objections, and since I think all of three people read this blog and likely don't care.... February posts won't have anything to do with booze! (Egads!) but I promise to try and make them equally fun.  Keep in mind February is a short month and the booze posts will be back before you know it! 

Cheers!

Bowling for Beer

Eric Bowling in the Shadow of Two Bud Lights

Few things go together as well as beer and bowling.  So when we decided to go bowling yesterday, of course we had a few Bud Lights.  Did you know that at the bowling alley in Kenmore, a Bud Light will run you $1.50? $1.50! Amazing! I haven't paid less than $4 for a beer since college. It would have been better if they'd been in the shape of bowling pins, but for $1.50 you can't exactly complain.

I can't decide if the beer helped my game or not.  My first game was 122, my second 89 (yikes!) and my third 130.  Before you belittle my scores, the last time I went bowling was well over a year ago at a company Christmas party, where I'll have you know, I bowled a turkey!  In case you don't bowl or don't know, a turkey is three strikes in a row.

See? Proof!

Also in case you are a local and are wondering, the Kenmore lanes was a lot better on the inside than I expected from it's facade.  It was clean and bright and had TONS of lanes.

Cheers!

Like a Virgin

I thought this was too funny NOT to share.  However, I don't feel sorry for people that don't drink.  That's there prerogative. My parents don't drink and I often think of them as two of the most fun people I know.  Of course, my Mom does give me the concerned look with a "Are you sure you guys are o.k. to drive?" after two glasses of wine over 6 hours on Christmas day, but that doesn't mean she's a stick in the mud.  PLUS if we ever DO drink a little too much and need a DD, we always know they're 100% sober.  I digress.  Today I thought I'd share one of my favorite virgin drinks.  

The Shirley Temple

1 1/4 ounces grenadine

1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice

Ice

3 ounces club soda

2 maraschino cherries

I know it's a rather old fashioned drink (heck, it's named the Shirley Temple!) but it's seriously yummy. It's also a super fun drink to order.  People will give you a double take 9 times out of 10.  I even had one waiter ask me what was in it. 

Cheers!

SnOwMG!

Here we are; day 2 or 3 depending how you look at it, of snOwMG! We decided that we want to make sure that on top of everything else, we don't get sick.  One of the things I believe strongly helps you to remain healthy, is a good dose of Vitamin C.  Lucky us, we'd just gotten a shipment of Honeybells before snOwMG hit!  If you haven't had a honeybell, you are seriously missing out.  These are a holiday tradition for us and we always over order and end up juicing some of them.  So we decided to put some of that juice to work as a:

SnOwMG Honeybell Sparkler

1 oz Vodka

6 oz Honeybell Juice

Splash of Seltzer Water

Yeah, that hit the spot and so far neither of us are sick.  I'd say it MUST be working and we all need to consume these on a regular basis in order to maintain our health. 

Cheers!

Snowmageddon!

 

It's Snowmageddon here in Seattle and I celebrated being stuck in the house with a rambunctious 7 year old with this little beauty. 

Snowmageddon Berry Slush

1 oz Rum

1 cup of frozen berries

3 oz Sweetened Lime Juice

1/2 cup of Snow (or water if you aren't feeling eating snow)

Quite good!  In case you can't tell, I often just throw things in the blender that I have available, give it a pithy name and call it good.  It's easier than making a real drink. We're anxiously awaiting Snowpocolypse so stay tuned to see what we whip up next!

Cheers!

Floating Away

You know what goes with almost anything? A shot of booze.  A shot of booze will get almost any drink up on it's feet and make it a lot more fun to drink.  Case in point; a root beer float is absolutely DELIGHTFUL with a shot of dark rum.  Now you may not think that cold drink like this would be a good choice on such a cold winter day, but I learned long ago from Cliff Claven that you should drink cold drinks on cold days, and hot drinks on hot days, despite what common sense would dictate.  I have no idea if that's true or not, but in my opinion, any day is a good day for a root beer float with booze in it!

Winter Root Beer Float

1 oz Dark Rum

1 Can RootBeer

Vanilla IceCream

Cheers!

Put a cork in it!

Last year we got into the habit of saving our corks and displaying them in a decorative vase.  I often think of this as the adult version of displaying all the bottles of alcohol you've consumed on your windowsill in your dorm room.  Not really sure why this is an acceptable decorating practice, but since places like Pottery Barn and Ben Franklin sell corks as "decor" if you aren't "sophisticated" and "classy" enough to be drinking enough wine with corks to create a similar statement it's o.k. with me!  This year's number..... 110.  That's a bottle every 3.3 days (I was so hoping it'd somehow be Tebowesque and be 3.16! Dang! In case you are wondering, you need to drink 115.5 bottles to get that number) yikes..... kind of seems like a lot.... However clearly that didn't even come close to filling our decorative container so we'll just have to try harder this year.  

Cheers!

It's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas

Well, Sunday was the day we took down the Christmas decorations. Always a day of mixed emotions, sad because the house looks empty happy because the house looks clean and fresh.  Regardless! What better way to celebrate such a day than to be drinking Mimosa!  This one was premixed blood orange concoction that we got at World Market.  Upon my first sip I thought... it reminds me of something... so I reached way back into my memory banks and came up with........ Mad Dog 20/20.  I haven't thought about Mad Dog 20/20 in 10 years. Yuck. There is a reason you only drink Mad Dog when you have about fifty cents to your name... it's terrible! Do they even sell it any more?  Eric thought it was more like Boone's Farm.  Another one you aren't probably going to be reaching for any time soon.  If you're over 25 that is.....  Either way, it wasn't good.  Do yourselves a favor and stick to fresh OJ with sparkling wines that cost more than $10.

Of course, none of this means we didn't polish off the whole bottle.  Those decorations weren't taking themselves down!

Cheers!

Beercation

Aaaaaahhhhhh beercation. I mean vacation. Yeah, vacation, that's it! This one was for the kiddo to celebrate her SEVENTH birthday so that meant... THEME PARKS! Oh the joy. Do you hear it in my voice? No... huh...can't imagine why..... I think few things rank as being as stressful as "enjoying" a theme park. I honestly don't think I've ever heard as much screaming, crying, and whining as I heard at DisneyWorld when we went there in 2009....and that was by the parents! I digress. So how do we keep our cool? Beer. Conveniently, at SeaWorld, San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari park beer is liberally sold. In a 22 oz cup. Perfect for walking around and enjoying the animals in their confines. Sure it was Miller Lite, but that's actually the perfect light and refreshing thing you need when someone is begging and pleading for just one more cup of nectar to feed the parrots. I highly recommend it.

Cheers!

Ringing in the New Year

Since we'd planned to leave on Violet's birthday trip on New Year's Day this year, we decided to forgo our traditional getting tipsy at home in favor of getting enough sleep (how old are we?) so we had to break out the bubbly a little late this year. This Wilson Creek Almond "champagne" caught our eye. We thought almond? Why not? We were rewarded for our dare to dream attitude by DELICIOUSNESS! We went to the store the very next day to buy more it was so good. In fact, I liked it SO much that my New Year's resolution is to try more types of champagne and sparkling wines. I know... how EVER will we be able to keep such a challenging resolution?

Cheers!