countdown to new year’s: mimosa bar;

The mimosa bar for our New Year’s Eve Countdown Bash came out super cute!  I decided that four was the perfect number: four fruits, four juices, four champagnes!

Champagne

Now we decided to use Andre as the champagne.  It’s not classy, but if you’re going to mix with super sweet juices and mix the champagne, no need for the good stuff.  We did reserve a bottle of “good stuff” for the actual midnight toast though!

For champagne varietals, we had: (1) Brut, (2) Extra Dry, (3) Spumante, and (4) Blush.  We also had some sparkling cider which is a perfect non-alcoholic varietal!  You can even get the kids in on this (or your friends that need to drive!).

Fruit

So of course, you can pick whatever fruits you want.  You may want to pair these with your juices, but there’s no need to.  Sometimes it’s fun to throw some different things into the mix.  For our selection, I went for: (1) Blackberries, (2) Strawberries, (3) good ol’ oranges, and (4) limes.  Now some people did use the limes in their cocktails, but in reality the reason I selected limes was because we were planning to do “Countdown Shots” on the hours, and limes come in handy for that.

At the dollar store I found 4 blue martini glasses and thought they’d be a perfect size for the fruit, and boy was I right!  It gave the display some class while still being fully functional.  Plus I just like the martini glasses, and expect to use them in the future for pictures and other cocktails, so a very worthwhile $4 investment, I’d say.

I also suggest, if you expect a lot of people or a lot of drinking that you cut up extra fruit and store it in an airtight container in the fridge for later.  Especially if you’re planning to have a drink or two, it makes it easier on cleanup since you do it all at once, and it will save you some time later if you need to restock easily.

Juices

For our four juices I went with: (1) Raspberry Lemonade, (2) Classic Orange Juice, (3) A blueberry berry-blend smoothie, and (4) Cranberry Juice.  Again, feel free to use whatever juices you prefer based on your own tastes.  I will say that the blueberry berry-blend went super well with the mimosas and was my personal favorite.  I got this juice from the “organic” juice section, which I’ve found usually in or around the produce aisle rather than with all the other juices you might more typically buy.  I really wanted a strawberry one, but they didn’t have a large container for strawberry juice, and therefore I went with the blueberry one.

I will say that because we used the cheap-o dollar store plastic champagne glasses, the mason jars were enough juice, though next time I might spring for some dollar store carafes so that there’s a bit more juice floating around for people to use.

Related posts:

waffle bar; countdown to new year’s: chocolate tart; cake mix coffee cake; mimosa sunrise; easy fruit cobbler;