Thirsty Thursday: Liquid Apple Pie

I could have also titled this post, "What to do at Lowes to have the whole store asking you what you are building" because if you follow me on Instagram, you know that last night I purchased some lumber and had them cut all of it to 10.5" pieces. 54 of them to be exact.

Yep, I was that girl in Lowes who all of the male employees stare at, wondering if she knows what the heck she is doing. The kid cutting the wood for me told me cuts were $5 each... ha! (They didn't charge a thing for the cuts, maybe it was because I was wearing my very best yoga pants??) Then 3 more employees came back to see what all the fuss was about. And again, as I was pushing my little buggy up to the front to pay, I had 3 more Lowes employees coming out of the woodwork asking me what I was building.

Giant Jenga, of course! Its so easy to make a set, and a great drinking game. I'm sure I'll have more photos of this in action this weekend, but all you need is 6 pieces of 2x4x8 lumber cut into 10.5" pieces. When you get home, sand the pieces so you don't get any splinters and if you want, you can spray paint the wood.

When playing, make sure all pets are inside the house. Also, if you're really drunk clumsy, you might want a helmet.

Finally, to the real point of this post...

Because you probably haven't heard me talk about wine, pumpkin beer, pudding shots or sangria enough this fall... I'm bringing you one of my favorite boozy concoctions today. Just in time for your Halloween parties! I guess we're trying to soak in all of the boozy fun we can before we get old and kids force us grow up a little.

Side note... Even though we had an open bar at our wedding, we had two guests with Liquid Apple Pie in mason jars, sharing it with everyone. Let me tell you, those two guests were easily some of the favorites at our wedding! ha!

Don't be intimidated by the grain alcohol. I absolutely promise you that you will never know its in there! However, you can still get pretty toasted so be responsible! There I got my disclaimer in there, right? Anyways...

Ingredients:
1 Gallon of Apple Juice
1/2 Gallon of Apple Cider
4-6 Cinnamon Sticks
1 Liter of Everclear

I cut this recipe in half because we'll only have 4 people here this weekend and already have a ton of beer! I'm sure you can swap out the grain alcohol for a different liquor, or use 151 if your state doesn't sell Everclear.

This is one of the easiest drinks to make. In a large pot on your stove top, simmer the apple juice, apple cider, and cinnamon sticks for two hours (do not boil). Remove from heat and allow to cool. Then, strain out the cinnamon sticks and add the Everclear.

It's absolutely essential you put the Liquid Apple Pie in a mason jar, because its cute and keeps it sealed. We couldn't fit all of it into just one mason jar, so the rest went back into the Apple Juice container. You know, just keepin' it classy.

Refrigerate until ready to serve. Hint: Top a shot of this drink with whipped cream. YUM!

Has anyone had this drink before or have any other concoctions planned for Halloween festivities? I saw these shooters which would be SO fun for a party!

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Pudding Shots and Painting

Happy Monday all! I hope you had a fantastic weekend! This morning we woke to a torrential downpour, which I assume is the effects of a tropical storm, and I'm kind of loving it. There is nothing better than cuddling for "five more minutes" after you hit that snooze button... three times. My coffee even tastes better today.

If you follow me on Instagram, you got a sneak peak at our DIY headboard that we finished and put in our bedroom this past weekend. Hallelujah! Every time I hit a milestone during that process (building, padding, upholstering, and then applying the nailheads), I had this feeling in my gut like I just screwed it up somehow. In the end, it came out even better than I had expected. I'm so excited to share some of the progress we've made in the bedroom redo as well as all of the deets on how we made the headboard so stay tuned!

This weekend I tried something new. It wasn't on my Fall bucket list, but I'm totally adding it so I can have the satisfaction of crossing it off.

Last night I joined two of the girls I went to the shooting range with for a little evening of wine (or in my case, Hard Pumpkin Apple Cider) and painting! Now I just need to find a place to display this masterpiece...

It was so fun and such a unique experience! I like to think I'm pretty crafty, but painting has never been included in my artistic skill set. Thankfully the instructor went through the process, step by step, and helped us recreate her painting of the Arthur Ravenel Bridge. This studio has a couples painting night too... I can only imagine what Steve would say if I tried to get him to do this with me!

In progress!

In honor of my friend's birthday, I decided to whip up two batches of pudding shots and brought them in a totally non-classy cooler to the painting party. And in case some of you were wondering why I'm always talking about booze or cooking with it, I promise I'm not a total lush!

If you haven't had pudding shots before or tried to make them, they are a huge hit for very little effort. A friend of mine makes these and comes up with the best liquor and pudding flavor combinations, so I recommend googling it if you want to check them out. For our purposes, I made chocolate pudding with vodka and Baileys and vanilla pudding with both Cake and Whipped-flavored vodka. YUM!

For your basic pudding shots:
1 small package of instant pudding
3/4 cup Milk
3/4 cup Liquor (try to mix two liquors with a 2:1 ratio)
8 ounces of Cool Whip
2 ounce Souffle cups with lids

First, whisk together your milk and pudding mix. Once that is mixed well, add your liquors. It will look a bit watery for pudding, don't worry.

Add your Cool Whip, a little at a time, to the pudding mixture and whisk until all Cool Whip is completely mixed in. I put it in my stand mixer on setting #4 for about 2 minutes.

Spoon pudding into souffle cups and freeze until ready to serve. I added some sprinkles and a little bit of Cool Whip to make them pretty, until I ran out of Cool Whip. Boo!

For the Vanilla Cake pudding shots, I added 1/2 cup of Cake Vodka with 1/4 cup of Whipped Vodka. For the Chocolate Baileys pudding shots, I added 1/2 cup of Vokda with 1/4 cup of Baileys. Another combination I'd love to try... put some graham cracker on the bottom, then mix up some pumpkin spice pudding mix and either spiced rum or whipped vodka, then top with Cool Whip. Hells yes. Turns out, pumpkin spice pudding is hard to find so good luck!

That's it! Depending on how much you fill the souffle cups, you can end up with a lot of pudding shots.

These would be perfect for a bachelorette party and you don't to be as careful with them liquifying like you do jello shots! Just keep them on ice or in the fridge if you can!

Well, there is my boozy Monday post! Has anyone had pudding shots or done a wine and painting night?

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Apple Cinnamon Sangria

Helllllo October! And where the heck did September go?! Last year at this time I thought time was flying because I was planning a wedding, but this year is no joke! I'm trying to soak in every last bit of the fall goodness before we start traveling, Christmas shopping, and I get a year older. Who am I kidding, I'm already Christmas shopping!

So in honor of the first day of October, I wanted to make a good boozy beverage to enjoy on our back porch now that the leaves are starting to fall and the bugs aren't eating me alive. I mentioned my Liquid Apple Pie cocktail last week, but Publix didn't have any apple cider yet so that had to wait.

Good thing I was lazy though because I'm pretty obsessed with the random concoction I threw together!

 
After scouring Pinterest for a good fall sangria recipe, I decided a Monday night was as good as any to try one out. The problem was I didn't have all of the ingredients for any of the recipes and was too lazy to drive a mile down the road to Publix. Yes, literally 1 mile is all the further I had to go for the grocery store.

Ingredients:
1 bottle of Pinot Noir (can substitute Merlot if you like that better)
1/2 liter of Sprite
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice
2-3 Apples
3-5 Cinnamon sticks

This is a pretty simple process so I didn't take many pictures. First combine the wine, sugar, and spices in a medium pot on the stove. Let simmer for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved.

While the wine mixture is simmering, chop the apples into slices. If you like pears, you can add those too.

Put the chopped fruit and your cinnamon sticks into a pitcher, top with ice, and add the wine mixture after the sugar has dissolved.

Refrigerate until cold. Add Sprite, then serve!

The sprite makes it sort of like a spritzer, which I like a lot. I'm looking forward to more back porch and fall sangria action tonight! The hubs doesn't like fruit so I've got this baby all to myself. Bonus!

Have a great October first y'all!

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