It is December 30th and I have posted nothing about New Year’s Eve….and it is one of my favorite holidays of the year.  For the past several years my Bubbly Cohort has visited with her family to ring in the New Year and most importantly, celebrate her wedding anniversary! 

This year is no different.  The best part about visiting with this family is that our children are all the same age.  She had her oldest 5 weeks before my oldest was born and then she had twins 2 1/2 weeks after my little one was born – we have been through a lot together!

We are once again hosting New Year’s Eve at our home – it has become a standing tradition.  We’ll have lots of appetizers, I make a pasta dish with rigatoni, Italian sausage, peppers, onions – delish!  Fireworks are ready to set off once it gets dark.  Then we do a “kids countdown” at 8:00 p.m. complete with sparkling cider and lots of noisemakers!  This is so much fun for the kids – then off to bed they go!

The crowd this year will be a bit larger than in year’s past, including us, we will have 7 families joining us for the festivities. I will definitely write a post on the details of the party later this week, but for now – I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite sparklings.

The hubby and I tend to do a lot of taste testing before our holiday party to find unique and reasonably priced wine and sparkling – we didn’t do that this year because we were so happy with what we chose last year!  I also served this at our 2012 Easter Brunch.  I love this – it is yummy and inexpensive.  Found (of course) at my favorite store Total Wine – it is from France, but I don’t believe it is from the Champagne region so it is considered a sparkling variety.  Priced at $8.99 a bottle, Depreville Extra Dry is worth a try.  They also have a Rose and Brut which I have tried as well, but the Extra Dry is my favorite. 

What are you drinking this New Year’s Eve?