Sip Guru: Sumo's Sweet Stuff

I'll let you in on a little secret: there's a part of me that has always wanted to be a talk show host. 

How great would it be to have a career where someone makes you look fabulous, 

and you spend your morning sipping a latte and talking to famous people or good friends 

who have something relative and exciting to share with you?

Well unfortunately, this is not my full time job,

and I can promise I don't look fabulous sitting here in my sweats and ponytail,

BUT I do get to share our someone really great with you 

and she is going to share something relative and super exciting...

 Meet Summer of Sumo's Sweet Stuff, our very first Sip Guru!

She does tons of fun craft tutorials on Tuesdays,

 (This Lace Ruffle Skirt is enough to make me want to board the baby train)

and has a bunch of great bites ideas on Wednesdays to pair with your drinks

 (Seriously, how great does Chocolate Covered Bacon sound?)

And best of all, she shares our love of Diet Coke, so we knew she had to be great!

 We know you'll love her too:

Hello everyone!

I'm Sumo! Well, my real name is Summer, but my husband nicknamed me Sumo when we were dating. (Yes, I still married him!)

I blog over at a little place called Sumo's Sweet Stuff.

It's a blog I started to share my crafting and creating. I also like to host giveaways, feature other bloggers, and maybe share some crazy ramblings about how much I love Diet Coke, or my relationships with Veronica and Lucy (my sewing machine and Silhouette). I started sewing about a year and a half ago, and I haven't looked back since! It's probably my favorite creative past time now, especially since I've got two little girls and a third one on the way!

Every Monday is Market Yourself Monday, where you can link up your latest projects, and visit other blogs to get some inspiration!

I was excited when Kirstin asked me to share a drink recipe over here. There's one frozen dessert drink that I make that my husband is crazy about; if I had been making it before we got married, I might have thought that's why he married me!

Frozen Hot Chocolate.

It might be chilly where you are living right now, but don't brush this drink aside because of that. It just gives you an excuse to snuggle up with your sweetheart while indulging in a fantastic dessert. Maybe while watching your favorite Christmas movie. (Which, in case you are wondering, should be White Christmas).

Here's what you need:

- 6 oz Hershey's chocolate bar (the huge bars are 7 oz. so I usually just use a whole one of those - it can't hurt, right?)

- 2 t hot chocolate mix

- 1 1/2 T sugar

1 1/2 c milk

Start off by melting your chocolate bar. Be careful not to burn it!

Stir in your hot chocolate mix and sugar.

Add 1/2 c milk.

Put it in the blender and add your remaining 1 c of milk.

Blend with 3 c of ice, or however much ice you want!

Top with whipped cream (if you like it, I personally don't, but I know I'm in the minority!). If you save a little of your chocolate bar, you could also shave some of it on top of your whipped cream.

Yum!

Enjoy!

The "Recommended by YOU" Bar at our Sips Launch Party

Saturday was our Sips Etc Launch Party!

To say it was fun would be quite the understatement.

Kirstin and I had such a good time planning and decorating and creating, and TheAdams would probably admit they had fun coming up with their contributions too.

You can see more details about it here, but I can tell you that it included lots of fun Sips- a Latte Bar, a Pumpkin Chai Martini (with a twist), an H2O Bar, and homemade cider.

And of course we had some great Bites- delicious dips, and fried pickles, and all kinds of red and white sweet treats like red velvet whoopie pies, red velvet cupcakes, Red Vines, and an assortment of other red and white candy.

Lots of these things will show up as tutorials in the coming weeks, but today we wanted to highlight one of our favorite features: the "Recommended by YOU" bar.

The invites requested that each guest (or couple) bring their favorite drink to share. It could vary anywhere between your favorite beer or wine (Moscato was Kirstin's recommendation), to your favorite flavor of Izzes (Grapefruit? Pomegranate? That's a tough one), or even Diet Coke (my recommendation). Katie even brought hot apple cider. In a percolator. That's dedication!

To prep for the bar, Kirstin made a "Recommended by YOU" sign so guests knew exactly where to put their drinks.

She also made little tags that said "Recommended by" with a space for the guest to write their name so everyone knew who brought what.

 

Guests tied their label to their drink with a color coordinated ribbon so that everyone's recommendations were clear. And of course, we had several Sharpies on hand for proper labeling!

Not only did it look great (if we can say so ourselves), but it was fun to try people's favorite drinks, and made for a great conversation piece.

Throwing parties this holiday season? 

Might we suggest that you add a "Recommended by YOU" bar to your party plan?

TheAdams- Po' Man's Bloody Mary

So I'm sitting here watching the History Channel Modern Marvels (I don't have school today, hence why I'm just sitting watch the History Channel at 11 AM). Today is my lucky day, its an episode that is all about beer brewing. I'm working on a Beer 101 series and this episode is awesome. I almost want to give up on the Beer 101 series and just recommend you watch this episode, but it might be hard to put into a blog post.

Anyway, since the girls made some pretty awesome tomato juice, we were poised to find a way to involve beer.  After a little research, we found this original recipe here... it's a Bloody Mary made with beer.

We thought we'd try it ourselves with the tomato juice that they had just made.

We thought it was great and fit right in with our student budgets.

We used a pale ale in our mix but I would be interested to try it with different kinds of beer.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

tomato-tini (the garden in a glass)

Now, if you've made some homemade tomato juice and have a hankering for a sort of "salad-in-a-glass" martini, we have the one for you!

Mix up a cup of tomato juice with a few fresh basil leaves in a food processor.

Pour into a shaker.

Add a shot of vodka and ice.

Garnish with basil.

Shake, pour, sip! 

Perfectly garden-y... but in a drink!

Homemade Tomato Juice

Healthy. That's the name of the game around here lately. Between Kirstin running a half marathon in early October, my Adam doing P90X, and me wrapping up couch to 5k (though lately it's been a poor showing I should say), our focus seems to be on getting healthy. (Adam G. ends up getting healthy options by default; you can ask him if that's a good thing or a bad thing).

So, when we finished sun drying most of Kirstin and Adam's end of season tomatoes from their garden, we had to come up with some ideas of what to do with all the leftover ones.

Extra tomatoes + health kick = home made tomatoe juice?

To us, that's exactly what it meant.

Want to know how to do it too? Good, because I'm just about to tell you:

Here's what you need:

6-7 medium tomatoes

1/2 t salt

pinch of pepper

pinch of sugar

(this makes about one serving)

Here's how to do it:

Cut up the tomatoes into quarters

Place into a blender and blend until smooth

Transfer to a sauce pan and add the salt, pepper, and sugar

Put on low to thicken up a bit (you can always add water if it gets too thick)

Then strain out the seeds and pepper grounds if you have some.

Pour into your favorite glass, and enjoy a homemade dose of vitamins A and C.
And quite a tasty dose of it, if I do say so myself. 

OR... save in the fridge for some other uses for tomato juice coming at you tomorrow and Friday.

 Curious, aren't you?