Remember that scene in Stand By Me where the boys are sitting around chatting about important issues like if Goofy is a dog? And Vern says if he could only have one food for the rest of his life, it’d be Pez?  I have my own food list (because I would simply demand more than one thing from whomever made up the one-food rule). On that list, next to mac n’ cheese and ice cream, would be wine and chocolate and cheese. Yes. I would survive on wine and chocolate and cheese forever if one could survive on wine and chocolate and cheese forever. Though I might also request some crackers for the cheese. So I would say I very much enjoyed this gift from Brookside. And I think you will, too.

These fruity chocolates are so so good, the perfect bite of dark, smooth chocolate with a burst of fruit flavor. Seriously. I know I sound like a commercial, but that’s a pretty accurate description. I got a package of each flavor: Dark Chocolate Açai with Blueberry, Dark Chocolate Pomegranate and Dark Chocolate Goji with Raspberry. My favorite is the Pomegranate, methinks. I had to stop myself from eating them all before snapping the photo. And I did pour myself some red wine to taste with my chocolates. It was about ten in the morning, but given it was for “work,” I felt that was OK. I also got two stemless wine glasses, a white ceramic cheese board, a cutie cheese knife, a white ceramic serving bowl and even a $30 AmEx gift card. Aah, the perks of this gig! Do you want the same gift?

THE GIVEAWAY!!!

The Prize: One of you gets what I got:

·         1 pkg. Brookside® Dark Chocolate Pomegranate

·         1 pkg. Brookside® Dark Chocolate Açai with Blueberry

·         1 pkg. Brookside® Dark Chocolate Goji with Raspberry

·         3 serving bowls with a central loop handle (each bowl is an 8 oz. well)

·         Stainless Steel Server

·         Cheese Grip Board

·         2 Stemless Wine Glasses

·         Grocery Gift Card ($30)

·         Gaiam® Exercise Headband

To enter: Leave a comment to this post before Sunday, February 3, midnight, EST. One winner will be drawn randomly.

The details: Winner has 48 hours after being notified before another winner is drawn. Prize ships directly from Brookside to US address only.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

But not here. I want to end any confusion from the start to be sure you all maximize your chances to win. You see, the IZZE facebook page is hosting a contest, the Hello Good contest. Snap a picture with your favorite bottle of IZZE (they of the delicious sparkling juices flavored naturally with no extra sugar and perfect for parties because the bottle is so pretty). Then upload said picture onto the IZZE facebook page to enter their contest for a chance to win a year’s supply of IZZE.

THEN, get more chances to win cool stuff over at my other gig, HERE at Edible Crafts. Cool stuff like another chance for a year’s supply of IZZE. And 100 bucks to shop at Target. Or a gift card to Whole Foods. After you upload your picture to IZZE and enter your contest, just leave me a comment at Edible Crafts HERE with a link to your entry and you’re entered. Confused? Just click HERE for all the info. 

Want to see what I did with my bottles of IZZE? I dressed them up in costumes for Halloween. You needn’t get this, um, overly involved with your bottles like I did. You can simply snap a picture anywhere with anyone or anything. But given it’s Halloween, these bottles were just craving costumes I think.

All the eyes you see I just cut out of construction paper and drew black dots, but a hole punch or eye stickers would have been easier. For the bats, I folded a piece of black construction paper, cut out one side of the wings at the fold, unfolded and used a glue stick to attach to the bottle. For the mummy, I cut strips of white cloth and attached to the bottle with a glue stick.

For the ghost, I draped a circle of white cloth over the bottle, securing to the cap with glue, and glued on the eyes. For the witch, I made the hat with construction paper and glued to the cap.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

Posts without sugar are rare for me, I know. And these so easily could have been turned into sugar-filled sweets, but I wanted to test out my “Bone Chillers” ice cube tray the traditional way first. Almost the traditional way. I added food coloring. And it worked. Although my fingers got a bit stained popping them out of the tray, they add an almost beautiful, if eerie, touch to a glass of water. Sparkling water would’ve been waaaaay better. No, vodka would’ve been waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than water. Next Halloween, when this baby in my belly is almost one and I can freely chug vodka. I got my little Halloween surprise in the mail in the form of a box filled with fun things. It had this ice cube tray from Fred and Friends, some creepy plastic eyeballs, glow-in-the-dark paint, a ceramic faucet to make a pumpkin keg, and pretty Fall notecards from Ruff House Art.

This box of Fall was the October Celebrate Crate. Find lots more inspiration HERE.

And learn more about getting your own monthly crate HERE.

To make these ice cubes, I just filled by skull and cross bones silicon ice cube tray with water. Then I added a couple drops of Americolor Soft Gel Paste into each cavity (I used Orange, Electric Purple and Electric Green), then stirred a bit with toothpicks. Pop them out into drinks. Preferably drinks more exciting than tap water. The food coloring will spread throughout the beverage in an oh so Halloween-like way.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

… at least in my part of the world, though we’ve had our uncomfortably hot days already. Any big summer plans? We’ll be digging into the lead-filled walls of our 1930s fixer-upper home this summer, so my daughter and I will be heading North to visit family to avoid the dust.

A little trip down memories-of-summer lane for you, aka my archives.  Just in case you missed them the first go around. And also because I’m too exhausted to come up with something new today.  A true sign of summer. Maybe tomorrow. All the summer ideas are collected in one handy place if you just click that “Seasonal” button up there.

I’ve got some s’mores.

(s’mores on a stick, s’mores marshmallows, self-reflective s’mores)

Some refreshing beverages.

(lemonade cookies, gin and tonic, cookies for your cosmo)

Some refreshing fruit.

(strawberry patch cupcakes, watermelon cookies, strawberry spread)

How about some cool treats?

(popsicle cookies, ice cream sandwich pops, ice cream cone cookies)

And you must head to the beach.

(turtle cookies, starfish cookies, candy shells)

And be sure to celebrate.

(stars and stripes cookie bites, BBQ marshmallows, 4th of July cupcakes)

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

Blogging is not overly lucrative if you don’t get millions of readers a month, or if you’re like me and bad at business. My other gig gets me more dough than here, but I assure you I’m not buying gold bath tubs and diamond studded shoes. Though to be fair, even if I had money, I probably wouldn’t buy those things. But the big benefit of my other gig is the cookbooks. I get so so very many cookbooks to review and giveaway. Dozens and dozens of cookbooks about cakes and cookies and baking and gingerbread houses and pies and tarts and keeping chickens (keeping bees, too). All these cookbooks, and I realized the other day I rarely actually use them. So I said, “Meaghan, stop bein’ a jerk and make somethin’ already!” Really, I said that.

Right now, I’m hosting a giveaway over at Edible Crafts…

Given all the sweet things I make, how have I avoided candy for so long? I think it’s the thermometer thing. Temperatures are just so precise. And I’m imprecise. This book gave me the perfect opportunity to conquer my fear of candy. Especially when I spotted the “liquor lollipops” in the book.

Though you can use any hard alcohol, despite my aversion to even the thought of whiskey (thank you very much, Jim Beam and Georgetown University), I made my lollipops with some single malt scotch whiskey (I’m facing all kinds of aversions today). They really do have a “subtle and intriguing” flavor, as Wanat suggests, and I’m already thinking of my liquor-loving friends this Christmas. And they took almost no time at all to make, aside from waiting for the mixture to heat up to 300 degrees. I also learned you gotta work fast with candy. It starts to harden at lightening speed!

And as you can see, mine are, um, a little, shall we say… drunken? Yeah, “drunken” works on several levels. I didn’t have a lollipop mold so I attempted to pour little circles on a tray lined with parchment paper. If you down a quart of whiskey, I promise these will look like perfect circles. You might even see several of them.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!