1.14.2017

Bring Back the Cocktail Party - Hell YES!


One of my New Years resolutions is to WRITE MORE BLOGS... for gods sake! After twelve years of writing these things this has been my resolution for more than just this year. But I'm going to ease into it by sharing this article from the Huffington Post that I thought was pretty delightful and certainly very true - this may be the year that we all need to have more cocktail parties! Since everyone is becoming better cooks, eating more whole foods, making crazy good cocktails at home then really what better time to re-introduce the Cocktail Party!

The Article (link here) gives us nine, very good, reasons to bring back the cocktail party. Reason number one is enough for me to bring it on back! Remember years ago when you used to balk at a $10 drink, I used to say that's New York City prices if I saw that amount on a drink somewhere other than NYC. Now I can go to my local Rhode Island hang out and there it is.. the $12 drink! Not to mention NYC's $16 Manhattan. So here you go, the Huffington Posts reason number one.
1. You can drink what you want, without paying a ridiculous sum.
"I remember being aghast when the price of a cocktail hit $11 — and now we live in the era of the $15 martini. Even dives are raising their prices. Of course, I’m in the NYC region, where the cost of living has replaced pickpockets as the thing most likely to take all your money. Even still, when you think about a budget martini and the dubious ingredients mingling in the glass, wouldn’t it be much better to get one bottle of really good gin, rather than spend that money on bad drinks?" - Huffington Post - they go in with another 8 reasons...

I would introduce that it's such a nice thing to do in January, February and March when so many of us stay at home and cozy up. Why not get out and have some fun with your friends or host one yourself. This last holiday season we hosted a "Game Night" in the days between Christmas and New Year. We had a group of friends over and when they walked in the door they got a piece of tape with a name on it stuck to their forehead and they had to ask questions to guess who they were. Okay not the most unique idea in the whole world but it broke the ice and we had a good time. We went on with simple things that kids could play too like Charades and Spoons, most of the time simple is better when you have a crowd.

When we have parties I like to mix people around, it's not the same group of people every time, we mix surf friends, with my favorite shop customers, with some of our artist friends and then I like to throw a yoga guru in there for good measure. Never too many people, just a good number so everyone can talk to each other at least once. I like to serve a "cocktail" as people walk in and then we always end up hanging out in the kitchen - but hey that's fun too!

Read the article here and I hope we have 'elbowed' you into throwing a cocktail party!