Bottle Shopping

The other night I stopped by this wonderful little shop in North Dallas. Homebrew Headquarters is one of the few places that sells cases of wine and beer bottles at reasonable prices. I know, what's the fun in empty bottles, right? Well, actually, they can be lots of fun depending on what you put in them. (Chortles of glee...) Anyhow, it was exactly $20 for a dozen nice-sized claret bottles and screw-on tops, so that's not bad.

So, I've never been to a beermaker's haven before. It was interesting and it smelled delightful, kind of like root beer! There were bags of powders for making beer, wine, and soda. Boxes of bottles, jugs, kits, books, etc. were stacked up so neatly. Everything was in its place and clean to boot. Well, except for a bit of dust on the trophies and award ribbons on display.

All in all, it was a fun outing. What am I going to do with a dozen bottles, you ask? Well... A. and I made Coquito. It's a yummy drink made of eggnog, Coco Lopez, and rum. You would not believe how delish this is. Mix a 1/2 gallon jug of eggnog with 1 can of Coco Lopez. Throw in plenty of rum, vanilla, and cinnamon. Yes, cinnamon. Not nutmeg. Cinnamon has wonderful properties and makes this a healthy drink, good for your heart. Or so I told myself as I helped to polish off about a gallon and a half of this over the past week!!

Anyhow, the Coquito was bottled up and passed out to friends and coworkers. I tied on little penguin tags from Tricia Rennea's blog with strips of white polar fleece. Very cute. The polar fleece looked nice and fluffy. It reminded me of snow. You'd like the full effect, but of course, I'm not posting pictures since I still need a good digital camera. :) Okay, okay. I'll go and find cables and a battery for my hubby's old camera. That should do the trick. In the meantime, here's a link for the tags. These are so cute!! Since they don't say anything Christmassy, they can be used anytime when it's cold out. Or year-round if you live on Antarctica.