I love this easy Red Wine Hot Chocolate recipe! The image caught my eye on Pinterest. It's just perfect for a quick indulgent treat and the colour looks rich and chocolaty. The two best flavours in the World, combined, are just heaven! Just pour your self a large mug, sit back and enjoy! Head on over to www.immaeatthat.com for more scrummy images and where you'll find hundreds of other scrummy healthy drinks and eats.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup milk
- 1 cup red wine
- 1/3 cup dark chocolate chunks
- Optional: coconut whipped cream
Instructions
In
a saucepan over medium heat, combine milk and chocolate chips.
Whisking constantly until chocolate is melted into milk and you have a
thick and creamy chocolate milk. Pour in red wine and heat until
everything is hot. Pour into 2 mugs or 6-8 smaller glasses and top with
coconut whipped cream.
When anybody asks me what to give as a gift I'll always come up with the idea of wine first! Wine and chocolates... my perfect gift choice for any occasion and especially for me!
Wine is a great gift for a special anniversary occasion, particularly for a wine lover. Aside from making the choice of what wine to include, you can make it extra special with a personalised anniversary wine label.
Before I recommend my favourite wine labels, here are just a couple of tips on selecting anniversary wine.
Don't buy a vintage wine for a couple celebrating their first anniversary year, or any year up to 5 years of marriage.
For young married couples it's recommended to give a wine that is fruity, or sweet, such as a Beaujolais or Shiraz. Give a good vintage wine for couples celebrating their 10+ year anniversary.
Maybe you're thinking of buying a bottle of wine you would like the couple to cherish as a keepsake and drink at a later date. Just remember that young fruity wines are only designed to be kept for months, rather than years. You'll need to consider what wine you decide to buy and how long it will keep for. As an example the following wines tend to age for the following number of years -
Bordeaux Red 7-12 years
Cabernet Sauvignon 5-10 years
Champagne Vintage 5-10 years
Port Vintage 10-20 years (far more for some)
Zinfandel Red 5-10 years
So here's our top 6 Anniversary Wine Labels...
1. Celebrate the First Year
This elegant anniversary wine label gives love and thanks for that precious first year. A celebration of all the beautiful memories made and an occasion to look forward toward a life time of anniversaries together. It includes the wedding date together with who the gift is from. It also includes the couple's initials and a ribbon with the wording "Married Moments".
2. Celebrate The Early Years
A colourful and contemporary design, ideal for celebrating any of the early years of marriage. It includes the couple's names together with their wedding date and looks superb on a bottle of red fruity wine.
3. A Special Gift For Parents
This is our most popular anniversary wine label. Just perfect for a special bottle of wine for your parents to be enjoyed on their special day. The design is both elegant and contemporary .
4. Celebrate the Golden Years
A beautiful traditional design just perfect for the Golden Wedding Anniversary. I love the design of the linked numbers and heart shaped zero giving an extra special feel and the beautiful scripted names together with wedding date. It also includes the word Congratulations which is a nice touch. The design feels both traditional and contemporary.
5. Romantic Celebration
For both young and old marriages this is a lovely romantic design with multi hearts. I love the heart colours. Personalise this anniversary label with the couple's names and wedding date.
6. The Autumn Years
This design reminds me of a beautiful Autumn tree and so seems appropriate for longer marriages. Autumn can evoke feelings of looking back over a glorious Summer and looking forward to new beginnings. It can be personalised with the Couple's names together with their wedding date and a short personal message.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Personalised wine labels are a brilliant way of buying someone a birthday gift they'll appreciate. It's the perfect way to transform a bottle of wine into something truly special.
It's especially a nice touch if you know your friend or loved one's favourite wine. With your special message on the wine label a birthday occasion is made all the more memorable.
1. Say It With Numbers
Our most popular birthday wine labels are those with 'Big' numbers, especially our Black Hipster Style wine label. It's used to mark a special milestone birthday. Today we despatched a few of these labels from the big 40 to a gentleman soon to be turning 80!
2. Make It Fun
A play on words is always fun, we do love a good pun, and none better than this spec-tacular personalised wine label. This particular label was created for one of our customers who emailed us just on the off chance to find out if we had any ideas for her giraffe loving friend!
3. Keep It Traditional
Another popular wine label which is simply a traditional style most
suited to staff and clients. It's great to be able to present a fairly
generic but eye-catching style of wine label and still have the ability
to personalise it with the recipient's name together with a short
message... just perfect for employees or for a special thank you gift
perhaps, where you may not know the recipient very well.
4. Make It Pretty
Most of us women love to receive a bottle of wine! Why not make it all
the more lovelier with a gorgeous wine label. You can easily make
someone feel extra special, not just on their birthday, but at any time,
with a beautiful wine label such as this "You're Pretty" label. If
you're buying a gift for your wife or girlfriend's birthday simply go
the extra mile to make it as pretty as you can.
5. Include Your Smile
Never has there been such a buzzword as "selfie"! Many of us snap away and post to our favourite social media sites keeping lots of fun pictures on our phones. We've made it easy for you to upload your favourite picture and include it on a wine label! What better way to thrill your loved one with a fun picture on their special day.
Does it not seem like a dreadful waste? Throwing away, without any thought, your used wine bottle!
If you're anything like me, you find it easy to finish off a few wine bottles each week. But you feel guilty for chucking away something that is quite beautiful. Perhaps it's time to come up with some good creative ideas to put the wine bottle to better use other than the dustbin!
Here are some fantastic ways you can recycle or upcycle what is in fact a beautiful work of art in itself! I guarantee, as you read on, you will find you'll become amazed with what you can create with the simple elegant form that is a wine bottle.
Make a Vase
One of the most simple but creative ways to reuse your wine bottles is by simply making a beautiful vase. Use your imagination to decorate your wine bottle and create a talking point for your guests. You can decorate a bottle with colourful decorative tapes, or you could wrap your bottles in decorative twine or colourful string. You could even use coordinating colour nail polishes to paint more intricate designs. There are so many fantastic ideas on Pinterest to inspire you. Why not simply follow where your imagination takes you.
Credits:
Buzzfeed
Oregon Live
This idea is stunning! Neck down, each bottle is placed into the ground, to edge a pathway, creating a beautiful focal point.
An unexpected surprise about this idea, aside from looking stunning, is that it will attract butterflies and birds into your garden!
Because the bottom of a wine bottle is indented it enables water to collect each time it rains. The idea that each bottle becomes a water dish for wildlife is quite wonderful.
The best thing of course about this idea is that it's free! Path edging, such as wooden logs, is usually quite expensive and this is so much more fun and attractive.
The only downside to this idea is if it inteferes with the mowing of your lawn! If you don't edge a path, you might just want to try placing a cluster of bottles here and there for colour and interest.
Transform a Pergola
Credits:
Upcycled Garden Style
I love this idea, it's so beautiful. Transform a pergola from ordinary to magical with your used wine bottles and provide screening at the same time. You might want to add other kinds of bottles to create more vivid colour. This screening was made by using a diamond drill bit, to create a hole in each end of the wine bottles. Either a wooden or metal rod is guided through each wine bottle and fixed at both top and bottom to secure in place.
Create a Light Feature
How wonderful is this!? So imaginative and creative. It's kind of simple but a great masterpiece! I now have the urge to make one! This unique hanging light feature sold on Etsy a few years ago and unfortunately is no longer listed. The image is self explanatory though, so with a bit of creativity, I'm sure it can be recreated with (hopefully!) not to much difficulty. Oh the times I've said that and end up in a great mess!
If you're thinking of creating one of these you might like to check out our blog about how to cut glass wine bottles with ease.
Look After Your Boots
Credit: Living Chic On The Cheap
This is a great idea. I'm definitely going to try it! It will encourage me to better organise my shoe cupboard. Boots are usually found under a huge pile of shoes and those with zips are usually unzipped and messy! I guess you could fill the bottles up with stones or sand to add weight. This idea, to beautifully wrap each bottle, is lovely, especially if you're able to get your hands on co-ordinating wrapping paper to match your boots!
Thursday, October 08, 2015
Firstly we all know there aren't wine police out there who are going to sweep in and arrest you for getting it wrong! Personally, my first thought is to simply go for Champagne! It's just goes with anything right?
It might not be something you've considered but it's worth a thought, because if you're intending to serve a Brut champagne with your cake, the dryness (brut) will make the wine taste metallic and bitter. Combined with the cake it will just taste horrible. You'll be better off with a "demi-sec" bubbly because it's sweetness will simply complement the cake. A simple rule of thumb is that the wine should be much sweeter than the cake.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
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