Best Party Punch

For NYE this year it was around 2 degrees and felt like negative 7 or 8 degrees....so Matthew and I decided we would opt out of going out to celebrate, and instead we invited over a few good friends of ours who felt the same way. It ended up being SUCH a nice evening and I'm questioning why I ever went out to celebrate the new year in the past! I made a few appetizers for our guests and this easy punch that everyone seemed to love! It looks festive or holiday-esque but the flavor is just a wonderful unique punch that would fit well for any party. 

(Trader Joe's Organic Orange Juice is the best juice ever)

(I actually ended up adding way more cranberries) 

The recipe was derived from this- there were just a few things I wanted done differently. 

Here's my recipe:

1 1/2 cups whole cranberries (Hen House was literally the only place I could find these...)

seeds of one pomegranate

2 cups of orange juice

1 cup pomegranate juice

2 1/4 cups white soda

1 cup white rum

Trader Joe's candied orange slices 

fresh rosemary sprigs

Before adding all of the ingredients together, be sure to rinse the cranberries and pomegranate seeds or your punch will be really foggy and look a little gross. But after you'e done that just add all of the ingredients (apart from the candied oranges and rosemary) to a punch bowl and keep it cold. Remember not to add ice directly to the punch, but in each individual cup as to keep the punch from getting watery. Cut a thin slit into the candied orange slices and use for a garnish on the side of each glass. These are weird but technically edible and taste like those fruity/sugary fruit slices. The recipe called for the rosemary sprigs to add to each glass but mine were huge and I didn't feel like separating them so I added them on top of the cranberries in the punch bowl and it did look beautiful 😋 I tend to be all about the aesthetics. I set apart a glass of this punch BEFORE I added the rum and as a non-alcoholic drink it was so good! Our guests and Matthew all liked it as well so I know I'll be making it again.

I am one to always make a new year's resolution because I believe in trying to better yourself no matter where you're at in life. There's always something that you can do to improve yourself in one way or another and a new year is a great time to focus on this! 

This year I have a few resolutions. I want to be more intentional and charitable. I've always kept an agenda, but I would buy the super expensive ones that lay out everything beautifully for you and made your life super easy haha. This year, I got a simple notebook and I'm forcing myself to sit down and plan out my week/month and physically create the calendar myself. This will not only force me to think a little harder about the immediate future but also allow there to be a few times monthly where I can sit down and unwind to fill out the pages. There are a few other ways I will work on being more intentional in my every day life but that's the big one. Lastly when I say I want to be more charitable, I don't only mean donating more money to things that mean something to me, but also I'd like to be more charitable with my time, my happy moments, my conversations, and much more. I think this will mostly include things like reaching out to friends more often, calling my family more often, sending cards when friends or family are achieving their goals- not just for holidays, sharing more via blog, and really anything else that makes me feel like I'm expanding my capacity to be charitable. 

I would looooove to hear about everyone's new year's resolutions! I'll always have room to add more resolutions to my list 😉 I hope this year is full of success and love for everyone.

Happy New Year, friends! Make it great!

  

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