Wreath Party At Mi Casa

On Sunday I had a few girlfriends over to our house for a little holiday crafting party.  Can I just say that it was pretty much my most favorite way ever to spend an afternoon?!  I mean, really, I wonder if the girls want to come over again this coming Sunday... hmm.

I covered our dining room table in craft paper so that we didn't have to worry about getting glitter and hot glue all over the place -- and clean-up was an absolute snap.

 Since I am remote-challenged, Ian helped me get Christmas music flowing through the house.

I readied the Rosemary Rosé cocktails for pouring (recipe below!)

And I prepared a batch of apple chips for snacking!

We started off icing some sugar cookies.  

Here's mine!

And when the glue guns were nicely heated up, we got busy constructing the wreaths.

Here's my project -- I had a purple glittery wreath from previous years that I made.  I first made it in -- get this -- 2000 (so yes, it's adorned my front door for more than 10 years now!) and I keep adding things to it during the years to keep it fresh.  So now that we are in our new home and we have two front doors, I wanted to take off half of the items on wreath 1, add them to wreath 2, and then add in some new items to both wreaths to make them identical.

My girlfriend Kim, on the left below, worked on a moss-covered letter.  Kim's a blog reader ... HI KIM!  :)

And my other girlfriend Kristi had a live wreath from Trader Joe's that she covered in faux red berries and a fabulous cheetah-print bow.

Our friend Sarah used the template below to create her wine cork wreath.

It turned out amazingly, don't you think?!

As did Kristi's...

And Lindsay's ...

And Kim's!

And here are my finished wreaths.

Now for the fun part, and let's face it, the reason you stuck around (you lush, you). 

The recipe for the yummy cocktail I made us!

I first saw this recipe -- I think? -- in Real Simple magazine.

Rosemary Rosé

1 bottle of rosé wine, chilled

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

5-6 sprigs of fresh rosemary, rinsed

To make a rosemary simple syrup, bring 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar to a boil on the stove.  Once boiling, stir well and add in rosemary sprigs.  Remove from heat and let cool.  Remove rosemary and transfer to the fridge in an airtight container.  (I made mine on Wednesday and kept it in the fridge until Saturday)

To serve, pour a glass of rosé over ice and stir in the rosemary simple syrup to taste.

Cheers!