party drinks - The Idea Room

This Giveaway is now CLOSED!

Thanks everyone for your patience. The winner of the Our Best Bites Cookbook is number #190 Julie N. Congratulations Julie. Please email me at: [email protected]. You have 48 hours and then a new winner will be selected.

Fall is my very favorite season and I have asked a few of my favorite bloggers to share some of their fall favorites here with you. I am so excited to have Sara from Our Best Bites sharing her recipe for Apple Cider Floats {a delicious twist to the regular apple cider drink} as part of The Idea Room Fall Festival!

Hello Hello all you Idea-Roomers! I’m so happy to be hanging out over here today on sweet Amy’s awesome blog. My name is Sara Wells and I co-author the food blog Our Best Bites with my good friend Kate Jones.

Kate and I both have a serious obsession with autumn in general, but especially with fall food. I love the smell of apples and warm spices brewing, hearty, savory soups simmering on the stove, and rustic home-baked breads in the oven. My only problem, is that where I live in Boise, Idaho, all of those amazing flavors of fall (and my desire to consume them) usually arrive well before the fall weather.

When I start seeing pumpkins and autumn wreaths in the stores, we’re still sporting shorts and flip flops and buying popsicles by the truck-load. To solve that little conundrum, let me introduce you to, the apple pie float. All of the yummy flavors of fall, but perfect for summer temperatures!

It starts with nice, thick apple cider. Use the good stuff!

apple-cider-recipe

Add in some ginger ale for a little fizz action, and then plop in a big ole’ scoop of vanilla ice cream.

We like to top ours with a sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg and a little drizzle of caramel sauce.

Apple-Cider-Float

The apple flavor in a good cider is out of this world, and when the ice cream starts melting and creating a creamy, frothy drink with bits of caramel and spice? Can’t beat it. So keep those flip-flops on, and enjoy every last drop of summer as you welcome in fall!

Apple Cider Floats from Our Best Bites

Ingredients:

1 cup high quality apple cider (the thick stuff is best!)

1/2 cup ginger ale

1-2 scoops vanilla ice cream, or any seasonal flavor such as cinnamon or apple pie

ground cinnamon and nutmeg for sprinkling 1-2 tablespoons

jarred caramel sauce

Directions:

Pour apple cider and ginger ale into a glass. Add vanilla ice cream. Sprinkle on nutmeg and cinnamon to taste and drizzle caramel sauce on top. Serve immediately with a straw and a spoon. Yields: one serving.

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Now, speaking of seasons, Kate and I actually released our second cook book this week and it’s called, "Savoring the Seasons with Our Best Bites."

This recipe is in there, along with over 150 of our other favorite things to make during the various seasons of the year. You can read about the book here.

Thanks so much Sara! It has been so great to have you here sharing your amazing Apple Pie Floats!! They look amazing! Perfect for a party! I was able to meet up with Sara and Kate just yesterday at their New Cook Book, Savoring the Seasons, Book Signing Event at Orson Gygi in Salt Lake.

Sara and Kate would love to give a copy away to an Idea Room reader! Isn’t that exciting?!

To enter simply leave a comment here, on this post, and tell us what your favorite "fall food" is. Happy Cooking!

*Disclaimer– This giveaway will end on September 19, 2012 at 9:00 pm MT. Giveaway is open to residents of the continental US. The winner will have 48 hours to claim the prize before a new winner is chosen. I was given a copy of Our Best Bites Cookbook to review, however all opinions and statements are mine.

Minnie Mouse Party Ideas

I have been sharing some of the details of my daughter’s Minnie Mouse Birthday Party this week and am back to share how it all came together. I have just a few more easy and fun Minnie Mouse Party Ideas to share with you today. All of these things I was able to put together in just a couple of hours including the Minnie Mouse Cupcakes and the Minnie Mouse Oreo Pops that I shared earlier.

First off I was able to make this fun little birthday banner with my daughter’s name on it. I have removed her name for privacy reasons. I found a cute piece of scrapbook paper that had some fun letters on it. So I simply cut out the letters of her name and then glued them onto a red and white polka dot square of paper or a black piece of paper and then had then alternating. Then I cut out three Mickey Mouse heads, which I made by tracing one large circle and then two smaller circles of the same size for the ears. Then simply placed a circle of the red and white polka dot paper on the inside. The possibilities are endless. And you can see that I simply took a piece of rope and clipped them onto the rope with some clothes pins. Not the fanciest…but super easy and re-useable.

Then for the party drinks we served up some good old Coca-Cola and for the non-soda drinkers some red Fruit Punch. And do you remember the fun Mason Jar Drinks from my other daughter’s birthday party? I simply used the same jars and added new scrapbook paper to the lids to match this party theme. But I also added another small detail…some Mickey Mouse ears. I just added it to the very first one and let the birthday girl have that drink. You could add it to all of them…but I was on some time constraints.

I always like to add a pop of color by throwing some candy in a jar. The kids usually LOVE this part and snack on it till we are ready to break out the dessert table. We also had the Minnie Mouse Oreo Pops available for the guests to take home as a little party favor if they wanted to.

And I have to share something personal if you don’t mind. I was out of town for 5 days at The Creative Connection Event where I went as part of their Social Media Team, which basically meant I was there to tweet all of the fun things that we were learning. And if you follow me on Twitter I am sure you were very well aware of that fact…maybe even stopped following me at some point Smile ! Anyways, since I was so busy with the preparations for that, I didn’t have much time to get things together for her birthday or her birthday presents. In the Minnesota airport there was a vendor who sold pillow pets…which was exactly what my daughter had put on her birthday wish list (since her older sisters have them). And they had the little pillow pets which was exactly what I had been hoping to get for her. BINGO! I love it when things like that happen. Saved me some serious searching around at home especially since I had no time to do it.