Art Of Entertaining with Estancia

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ArtOfEntertaining #CollectiveBias The following content is intended for readers who are 21 or older.

The Art of Entertaining with Estancia

#ArtOfEntertaining #CollectiveBias

There's not much I'm more enthusiastic about than entertaining. I love having people over, cooking delicious food and making a swoon worthy spread. Over the weekend, we had a wine tasting party, complete with pairings and blind tastings.  When we moved to California in 2007, we weren't big wine drinkers. That quickly changed after many Saturdays spent in Napa, tasting all the delicious varieties that the west coast had to offer. We developed a love for California Cabernets, with Estancia being a favorite. Estancia Vineyards started in Monterey, California, where the midday heat, along with morning and afternoon fog, create a perfect grape growing climate.

There is nothing, in my mind, that goes better with wine than cheese. We've been known to have post-bedtime date nights, with just that for dinner! Creating a great cheese spread isn't that difficult. You'll need several varieties of cheese, some labels you can write on and some condiments. Some type of nuts, dried fruit and some prosciutto or smoked sausage is perfect. You'll want make sure there is a variety of soft and hard cheeses. For this party, I used smoked gouda, jarlsberg swiss, blue, cranberry cinnamon goat cheese and a caramel apple brie. I made the brie myself, simply wrapping a wheel of brie up in a piece of puff pastry and baking it. After it was done, I topped it with caramel sauce and diced apple, them stuck it back in the oven for about 5 minutes. It's my absolute favorite! 

There are plenty of options for the actual board you present on. I found this slate cheese board that I love and it's nice because you don't have to worry about it breaking when people hit a knife into it. 

Since it's Valentine's Day this week, I decided we definitely needed to sip some red wine with a heart shaped box of chocolates, right?!

Along with those chocolates, I made chocolate cheesecake bars and they were amazing. (You can find the easy recipe a bit further down in this post!) I also used some crunchy breadsticks and wrapped each one in a thin slice of prosciutto, which pairs well with Pinot Noir. 
When people are drinking a bit of wine, I like to have some bread around. A little bit of good olive oil, with some spices sprinkled in, makes for a simple, yet delicious appetizer for in between tastes.  

Now for a really fun part, blind tasting. I love doing this, especially with people who swear by expensive wine. To see them pick the $10-$15 bottle over the $50 one is so fun. Have some cards available for people to write down their thoughts, put 3-5 bottles in paper bags (making sure no one can see the labels!) and pour everyone a taste. Allow everyone to vote on each bottle and compare the results. You may have a new favorite wine!

Now let's talk about these Chocolate Cheesecake Bars...they're so good and so easy, so you will definitely want to make these. 

They start with a crust layer, made out of cake mix. 

Top that with a cheesecake filling,

Then finish with some more of the crust mix, crumbled on top. Bake, cool, cut and serve. That easy! 

Ingredients:

Crust layer:
1 box chocolate cake mix 
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg

Cheesecake layer:
1 8oz package cream cheese
1 Tbsp. milk
1 egg
1 cup sugar

Directions:
Mix crust, reserving 1 cup. Press into 9x13 and bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Whip filling until fluffy. Spread onto baked crust and top with reserved crust mixture. Bake for 25 minutes, cooling completely before cutting into squares.

Hopefully these tips will help you host your very own wine tasting party! Whether it's a romantic Valentine's tasting for 2, or a party with lots of your friends, wine tasting is a fun way to inspire, entertain and enjoy time together. 

You can probably tell that my favorite pairing is cabernet with brie cheese or chocolate. What is your favorite wine and food pairing? 

Inspire your table tonight with Estancia! Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook. 

Minecraft Gameband Party!

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. 

All opinions are mine alone. #GameOnTheGo #CollectiveBias

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated the release of the new Minecraft Gameband, a cool way to have a portable Minecraft, with a fun party. 

Before I go telling you how cool that little thing is, check out our Minecraft everything party. I seriously had such a blast prepping for this party. I made sure nothing was crazy difficult. It's so often that you see these elaborate parties that have just taken so much time and effort to put together. But, I'm here to tell you, that you can throw a fabulous party, without losing sleep or getting grey hair. 

The "Creeper Juice" was a big hit. They were just Mountain Dew bottles with the labels peeled off and duct tape added. 

A little bit of a simpler take on the cake pop, is the marshmallow pop. A large marshmallow is dipped in melted candy melts and voila. Way easier than making all those little balls! I used some black candy melts and a toothpick to make even more Creepers come to the party. 
 When I was done with the marshmallow pop dipping, I used the leftover green candy melts to drizzle on cocoa rice krispie treats. These made for perfect little grass blocks. 

Other cool things we had, were TNT bundles out of licorice, "water blocks" out of blue jello and a pile of "diamonds" from the wedding department of a craft store. I found these printables for the food tent card as well as the small wall art. This one is for the cute TNT wrappers. They used them to wrap little poppers, which were really cute!

There wasn't an unhappy person in attendance, from the little ones all the way to the teenagers!

Especially Cooper, since after all, he was the one with the Gameband.

So what is this thing? The Gameband, by Now Computing, is the first ever Minecraft wearable. It's a USB that doubles as a bracelet and watch. It's also features customization and that's Cooper's favorite part. His scrolls across and says "Coop Rocks!" You can have it show images or phrases, then choose how you want it to scroll. Cooper thinks he's definitely the coolest kid on the block with his cool tech bracelet.

The greatest feature, is that the Gameband saves your worlds, changes and all your work and backs it up on its cloud-based servers. It makes it so that you can play on your computer at home, grandma's computer while traveling for the holidays, or dad's computer on a trip to the office. (Or wherever else you happen to play!) Cooper loves that he can use it on his computer, or mine and always have his work saved for him. 

The Gameband is available in sizes small and large, to fit every Minecraft fan. I found mine in the mobile gaming department at Target. If you have questions or feedback about the Gameband, Now Computing are the folks to reach out to. They make the Gameband and are affiliated with Minecraft. 

Think your Minecraft fan will want one under the tree this year? They're a hot item for the holidays, so make sure you call ahead to see if your store has it in stock. Happy diamond mining!

You can find more from Molly on StilettosandDiapers.com

Easy Holiday Entertaining (and a yummy Christmas cocktail recipe!)

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. 
All opinions are mine alone. #HolidayMadeSimple #CollectiveBias 

I'm a bit of a "go all out-er" when it comes to parties and holidays. I love entertaining and I love to go theme crazy. I also really love when I can do all of those things very easily, with easy recipes and a small amount of clean up. Yesterday, I got exactly what I wanted. 

We had some friends over and I wanted to make it Christmas-y without too much work. I created a colorful winter wonderland in our dining room in about an hour. A simple snack menu included a snowman cheese ball, toffee fudge, a hot cocoa bar for the kids and a yummy "blue Christmas" cocktail for the grown ups. 

The cocktail was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself. I crushed up Wonka®  Sweetarts®  candy canes and mixed it with sugar. After dipping the glasses in some simple syrup, I rolled them around in the candy cane mix for a festive look. 

The drink itself is 1 part vodka, 1 part sour mix, 1 part blue curacao and 2 parts pineapple juice. I think they looked so cute and festive with the bright candy canes!

I had 3 types of cocoa for the kids, 2 types of marshmallows and some whipped cream. Although, I did catch Cooper shooting whipped cream into his mouth, straight from the container.

My friend asked if I made the fudge and was shocked when I said yes and how easy it was! I used the Nestle®  Carnation Famous Fudge Kit for my very first attempt at fudge making and it was SO easy. It's a box that has everything you need to easily make fudge, then I made it my own by mixing in 3/4 cup of toffee chips, right before I spread it in the pan. I used another 1/4 cup of the chips to press on the top. After chilling a couple hours, I sliced it and put it out. All 1.5lbs was gone in the day. Seriously so good. I think I'm going to make more in little packages for friends and teachers this year! 

Snowman cheeseball needed some mini chocolate chip eyes, but no one seemed to mind. 

I used some more of the candy canes to decorate and was glad I snapped a pic before the kids ate them all! 

A couple of my sweet friends. The boys were too busy watching football to get in on the cocktail pictures. 

Pretty much everything I used for the party can be found at Walmart. From the delicious fudge kit and candy canes, right down to the cute little containers and stir sticks. Talk about #HolidayMadeSimple. PS, the fudge is right in with the baking mixes, so when you're in there trying to decide what to bring to your next party, grab a box. You won't be sorry! 

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