Frosé All Day

How To Host a Frosé Party for Mother's Day

Mother’s day is right around the corner! It’s time to start thinking about fun ways to celebrate. Instead of a traditional Mother’s Day brunch, why not mix it up and throw a fun frosé party instead?

Frosé is simply frozen rosé, also known as one of the best adult slushies you’ll ever have! This frozen delight is a unique way to incorporate one of the prettiest wines into your mother’s day festivities. You can combine with fresh fruits for a refreshing taste or you can add syrups and other additional alcohol for an extra punch! This drink is easy to make and even easier to customize to your personal taste.

ProFlowers put together a full guide so you can throw the perfect frosé party for your favorite moms this year! Take a look at their  simple three-step recipe, styling tips and flavor recommendations for a one-of-a-kind Mother’s Day party.

I don't know about you but I can't wait to try all of these different flavors! Head over to ProFlowers where you can get not only the perfect bouquet but they also have a fun Mother's Day Poem Generator and some Mother's Day Quotes. Check it out!

I hope this helps you put together the perfect Mother's Day celebration this year!

You, minion, are too saucy

If you consider yourself a bookworm, there’s a large chance that you are a fan of William Shakespeare. Whether you read his works in your high school English class or have explored his plays in depth on your own time, there is no denying the impact that Shakespeare has had on the literary world.

To celebrate April 23rd, also known as the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death, Invaluable created a one of a kind Shakespearean insult generator. It may be a few days late but it's never too late to celebrate with some good humored insults!

The best part of these insults are that they come directly from Shakespeare's works. Shakespeare was a master of language and knew exactly how to string words together for any sort of impact he wanted to make - serious or otherwise.

The tool includes only the best of Shakespeare’s witty put downs. I know you’ll enjoy it as much as I do!

Poppin' Corks

One of the best ways to ring in the New Year is with a glass of champagne. Champagne is perfect for celebrations and festivities, making it great as you wait for the clock to strike midnight with friends and family. Because of how celebratory champagne is there are tons of wonderful quotes about France's iconic sparkling wine that you can use in a salute or even decorate your party with!

Using these printable champagne quotes from Gifts.com, you can easily decorate for your next soirée with these fun quotes, so you can have your champagne and drink it too! With words from authors, philosophers, politicians, and even experts themselves, everyone loves champagne, giving you tons of quotes to toast the New Year with!

One of my favorites of these champagne quotes is this one from F. Scott Fitzgerald:

These printable graphics are the perfect way to spice up your New Year celebration. Print them out and put them in cute frames as centerpieces on all of your tables. Or, print them out and hang them from string to make a banner of champagne quotes. You could also print them as small 4x4 size, get little frames and give them out as party favors for your guests too! Who wouldn't love to take something like that home with them? I know I would!

Here's a few more of my favorites:

Happy New Year to all of you and I hope you celebrate by popping a bottle of some delicious champagne!!

Dream Author Panel

Have you ever dreamed about meeting some of your favorite authors? Or thought about how amazing it would be to hear them speak about their books, characters and life in person? I think about this ALL the time when I’m reading a book by an author that I really love.

Recently, I was inspired by Eventbrite to come up with a dream author panel. No limitations – if I could put anyone together in a room, who would it be? Sign me up.

Eventbrite has a great tool on their website to help anyone plan and execute events in their local areas. With an awesome tool like this, maybe some of these dream author panels really can come true!

I thought a lot about who I would want on this panel and it was not an easy choice. I finally decided though that if I had this ONE shot, I would want to see a panel full of bad-ass female authors. Remember, there are no limitations with this so, it’s really not a lot that I’m asking for some of these authors to come back to life for this event.

Here are my choices:

Virginia Woolf

Woolf is one of my absolute most favorite female authors of all-time. She was such a free-thinking, influential author of her time that I just can’t help but be inspired by her. To imagine hearing this woman who gave us the quote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” in person…I would not be able to contain my excitement.

Margaret Mitchell

Mitchell is not quite the same feminist powerhouse that these other authors are but I couldn’t leave her out of this. Gone With the Wind is my favorite book and I would love to see her in the company of these other powerful women. Mitchell was much more understated in her rebellion and dealt with a lot of struggles in her short life, including spousal abuse. I believe, that rather than incorporate feminist themes in her work, she preferred to offer a more romantic view of life and love to fill those gaps she had in her own life.

Jane Austen

It’s hard sometimes to remember that Austen was writing novels during the late 1700’s. She consistently pushed the boundaries with strong female characters who challenged the social and economic status of women. It’s not surprising that her characters, themes and messages have stood the test of time and ring true still to this day.

Toni Morrison

There is no denying Morrison’s influence as an author. She wrote novels with complex, rich characters and deep, meaningful themes. There’s also no doubt that she is a strong, opinionated woman. However, she is careful to somewhat distance herself from the term feminism and offered up a different view on her writing when she said “In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book – leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity."

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale is one of Atwood’s most popular novels and due to the recent social and political climate in America, it’s been making a resurgence. Atwood consistently portrays female characters in her novels that are held down by an overpowering patriarchal society. However, it appears that Atwood prefers to take a more “realistic” approach to her world than a feminist one. Regardless of how you coin her, Atwood absolutely tackles gender and societal issues and would be incredible alongside these other writers.

Who would be on YOUR dream author panel? I want to know!

Guest Blogger - Nathaniel Danes

We have a special guest on the blog today - author Nathaniel Danes talking about his new book, BattleMaster. The book's release is April 20, 2017: BattleMaster, military science fiction. Book one of The BattleMaster Corps Trilogy. 

Bio:

Nathaniel Danes is a self-diagnosed sci-fi junkie and, according to his wife, has an over active imagination. Mostly blind, he writes to create universes where he has no limitations. He lives with his wife and daughter in the Washington, DC area.

Excerpt:

His eyes shifted toward his own line. That’s when he saw her, saw the BattleMaster. The twin moons stood at her back, illuminating her presence with a mystical glow. She was alone on the ridge but not for long.

Eight machines-of-war, battle-drones, emerged along her side. Half were small tracked vehicles with twin fifty-calibers and rocket launchers on a turret. The rest looked like six-legged spiders with a ball-shaped laser cannon and mortar tube on top.

She flung her arms forward and her minions erupted.

Check out what he has to say about his inspriation for this book!

Seeds of Imagination

            I can't speak for any author other than myself but I find the world ripe with seemingly insignificant scraps of information begging to be nurtured, grown into a story. I look at my ordinary life with the goal of finding hidden adventure.

            I'm low vision, functionally blind in most situations. As you can guess, my degrading retinas restrict what I can do in the real world. I love skiing, scuba diving, and a host of other activities I can no longer do, or do how I want to do them. This fighting retreat has been the story of my life since being medically discharge from the Army at the old age of seventeen, following my diagnosis.

            Simply put, I can't live the life I want to so my imagination has become my keep. My final impenetrable stronghold, impervious to the ravages of my affliction. I can go anywhere and do anything. It's an escape I utilize regularly.

            Maybe it's just me because my mind is so desperate for new material to chew on but I'll grad ahold of a minor piece of information and build an entire universe around it. That's how my latest novel, BattleMaster was born.

            Several years ago I saw a short segment on TV about the US Air Force's experiments with craft controlled by a pilot's brainwaves. The pilots were hooked up to simulators but the results were still very interesting. A female subject remarked that initial findings suggested women were better at this method of operation.

            The seed had been planted.

            That fact whispered in my ear for years and I combined it with others I picked up. Such as, knowledge the female brain is wired to maximize multitasking while males are superior at focusing on a single objective. Both have their advantages and are likely a result of survival demands Datong back millennia. Men hunting and providing protection while woman cared for the young and performed any number of important tasks.

            These two bits of information are what formed the roots of BattleMaster. I asked myself, if women are better at multitasking and the future of warfare is drone based, wouldn't they one day reign supreme on the battlefield? My imagination went from there and the story blossomed until it found its way to the page. 

            So, pay attention to the world around you. Seeds of imagination are adrift everywhere. 

Author Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nathaniel-Danes/1528587637363979

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nathanieldanes

Blog: http://nathanieldanes.blogspot.com/

Website: www.nathanieldanesauthor.com

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/nathanieldanes

Book Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/BattleMaster-Corps-Book-1-ebook/dp/B06XNTTQPN

VA Wine Expo 2017

I can't believe that I'm writing this already but - the VA Wine Expo has already happened. Everything that I was looking forward to for so long all came true this past Saturday.

For a wine lover, there really isn't a more amazing place to be than this event. I mean, there are over 650 different wines available to taste during this expo - that is insane! Obviously, it's impossible to taste all 650 wines but you sure can try to get close.

For me, this year was especially exciting because the International guest region for the expo was Spain and Portugal. Some of my most absolute favorite varietals come from Spain and I literally COULD NOT WAIT to try to some new ones.

Of course, the main event is all of the amazing Virginia wineries that come to the event and showcase their delicious wines. One of my favorite things about the expo is that there are often some Virginia wineries that we haven't gotten a chance to try either in person or at another festival. It's also a great opportunity to purchase some bottles from some of those wineries that don't distribute and are a little bit of a drive from home.

There were a few Virginia wineries on my list for this year that I had never tried such as Notaviva, 90+ Cellars, Whitebarrel, Gabriele Rausse, Castle Glen and Cunningham Creek. Don't worry - I'll be featuring some of these wineries in future posts so you can learn all about them. I have to admit that I did not make it to all of these tables - it was a long day y'all. And, it became glaringly obvious that I am not as young as I used to be. Day drinking is ROUGH.

Before you feel too bad for me that I didn't make it to all the wineries I wanted to, let me explain. First of all - we got the VIP tickets which got us in at 10am. You guys...we were drinking at 10am. That is craziness. Also, as I mentioned, I was SUPER excited for all the Spanish wines that were going to be at the expo this year. To me, these tables really were the shining star of our day.

We could not stop visiting all of the tables with the wonderful Spanish flags hanging behind them. We just kept tasting amazing wine after amazing wine. There was such a great variety and SO MANY BUBBLES. We had some delicious sparkling Rose's and Cavas. There was Garnacha, Tempranillo and Monastrell. It was just glorious.

If you get the chance to come to Virginia and attend the VA Wine Expo - do it. It's a day you (probably) won't forget.

The Wine Expo Is Coming!

One of my favorite days of the year is almost here and I’m so excited. The Virginia Wine Expo is happening THIS WEEKEND!

Last year was the first time I had been and let’s just say – I was hooked. You’ve never seen so many wineries all in one place. It’s fabulous. It’s mostly Virginia wineries but each year they have a special “featured region” that they celebrate. When I saw what the region would be for this year’s expo, I could barely contain myself.

They are featuring Spain!

Spain is my absolute most favorite wine region around and they produce some of the tastiest varietals. Needless to say I am really looking forward to tasting some delicious new Spanish wines.

In preparation of our visit to the expo this year, I went onto their website to peruse the list of Virginia wineries that would be in attendance. While the tasting is an all-day event, there’s still always too many wineries to hit all of them. So, it’s important to prioritize.

I tend to gravitate towards wineries that I have never heard of, been to or seen at other festivals around Virginia. This year, there are 7 wineries that have made the top of my list as “must tastes” this year.

Castle Glen

Cunningham Creek

Gabriele Rausse

Notaviva

Stanburn

Whitebarrel

90+ Cellars

Of course we will make it to more than these 7 booths but these are at the top of my priority list!

Another fun thing that I’m debating for the expo this year is something that I saw some people with at the event last year. Pretzel necklaces! I thought this was the coolest idea. When you are wine tasting ALL DAY, sustenance is so important if you are actually going to still be standing when the day is over. This might be just the ticket to keep us going in between food vendors!

I can’t wait to share all of my adventures at the expo with all of you so stay tuned!