I don’t know about you, but I miss my local craft cocktail bar.

We’ve been having fun trying to mimic or create some of our own craft cocktails at home lately. It’s become a fun game to find recipes since I prefer ones that don’t require rare ingredients and that don’t make too many dishes.

I like my cocktail to occasionally match the season. During summer, we drank lots of tropical flavors and in our recent temperature dip in California (it’s now more in the 70s/80s instead of 90s/100s), I was craving something different. I am not particularly a fan of apple cider. It’s usually served hot and in Southern California, it’s rarely cool enough in October here for a hot cocktail. I was excited to come up with a cold spiced apple cider cocktail to go along with our SoCal “fall”. We will definitely be enjoying these through these fall months!

We’ve been starting to see orders for our Thanksgiving stir sticks trickle in lately, so this is your reminder to get your order in today! Thanksgiving is going to be different this year, but we can still celebrate and be grateful.

Spiced Apple Cider Moscow Mule

Ingredients

2 ounces of Vodka

3 ounces of Spiced Apple Cider

3 ounces of Ginger beer

1 teaspoon of Lime juice

Sprinkle of Nutmeg/Cinnamon

Cinnamon sticks and dried apple slices for garnish

Directions:

Fill a cocktail glass (or copper mug if you have one) with crushed ice. Pour vodka, apple cider, and lime juice. With a spoon, stir. Then top with ginger beer. Add a sprinkle of nutmeg and cinnamon on top and garnish with a cinnamon stick and dried apple slice and a Delovely Details stir stick!

Hopefully, despite everything going on, you’ll find a way to safely celebrate this time of year. While 2020 has been one for the books, to put it in the nicest terms, I think if we all really thought about it, there are some things to be grateful for.

What are you grateful for?

It’s 2020 and it is the year of celebrating the holidays safely at home!

Navigating the holidays this season can be tricky but we can still keep it fun and full of treats.

Gather & Pop put together the cutest “Boo Crew” party set up for your littles to keep the holiday spirit going this year.

Balloons have made a strong comeback this year as the way to elevate any special event or occasion that may have to be celebrated at home. Gather & Pop have truly mastered this art. This pastel orange ombre balloon garland would have sent Evelyn into a hysterically excited freak out! Nothing is more festive for kiddos than balloons. We love how they pulled everything together, including our Boo Crew sign and laser cut bats and spider webs to surprise the kids first thing in the morning.

The tables were set with laser cut spooky spider web chargers, personalized bat place cards, and fun matching stir sticks. What is Halloween without some delicious treats? These adorable cookies and delicious cake from Sweet Cheeks Baking Co. was topped with our Squad Ghouls cake topper.

We had a blast creating all these spooky goodies and are excited to celebrate the Halloween holiday with our own kiddos with some of them. Things are crazy, but there are still ways to have fun, learn about new holidays, and make memories with our loved ones.

If you want to order any of these fun details, be sure to check out our shop or email us. We can’t wait to help you celebrate with your little boys and ghouls!

Design/Styling: Gather & Pop
Treats/Cake/Cookies: Sweet Cheeks Baking Co.
Cake topper/Boo Crew Sign/Placecards/Spiderwebs/Stir sticks/Bats: Delovely Details
Balloons: Gather & Pop
Calligraphy signage: Gather & Pop

Delovely Details is expanding in so many ways recently. The biggest expansion is probably that we added another employee and sister to Evelyn, with Hazel Marie!

Hazel was born in the middle of a global pandemic on June 7, 2020 at 9:01pm in very dramatic fashion.

While her entrance was dramatic, I’ll save that for another post, her existence has been mostly dramatic-free. Thankfully. Except for today while I try to write this post, typical.

Going from a family of 3 (+2 pooches) to a family of 4 (+2 pooches) has been fairly easy given that Drew is working from home due to said pandemic and business has been much slower with the restrictions we’ve seen on weddings and large scale events. Then again, I feel that taking care of a newborn is easier than being pregnant. At least for me anyways.

Hazel has been a very sleepy baby. At first we had to wake her up for her most of her feedings. This was the complete opposite problem we had with Evelyn who woke up for every single feeding SCREAMING. It was really hard to bring myself to wake a sleeping newborn at 4am but once she got back up to her birth weight, we started allowing her to take longer stretches. Now she wakes up on her own, we just have to work on keeping her awake long enough to take a full feeding so we aren’t up again an hour later.

Evelyn has made this transition beautifully. It helps having Drew around more so she’s still getting most of the attention she is used to. We are able to trade off with Hazel so that Evelyn hasn’t really had to “share” us too much yet. She is learning to be quiet around the baby, how to be gentle, help with diapers, and what burp cloths and pacifiers are for. Her favorite is wearing her “baby” in her Solly wrap just like mum wears Hazel.

This whole experience has been pretty crazy, being in the middle of a pandemic and all. However it’s had it’s silver linings. We aren’t feeling pressured to just jump back into a go-go-go lifestyle again, we are able to establish a good routine with both girls that seems manageable, and we are soaking all this family time up. There are definitely some challenging parts, something I will discuss in another blog post.

If I had to choose my favorite part of becoming a family of four, it has to be seeing Hazel and Evelyn develop their relationship. I have a little sister whom I’m very close with. I already see that relationship within my girls. Evelyn will burst into tears if I don’t let her come wake Hazel up with me. The first thing that we noticed Hazel tracking was the voice of her sister. Drew and I have to work at getting smiles from Hazel, where all Evelyn has to do is ask Hazel if she had a good nap and Hazel just grins ear to ear. They’ve definitely already started on that road to becoming good friends, and while I’m sure there will be fights and disagreements, I hope and know that they will learn to appreciate each other and share a love for each other.

If you know Drew personally, you know he’s into cars, racing cars, flying RC things, sports, typical “boy stuff”. When we told all our friends and family we were expecting another girl, most of the responses were, “Drew is the perfect girl dad”. (Just a suggestion, responding with…”aw, are you gonna try again for a boy” is a horrible response to a gender announcement.) They were all completely right. Drew was put on this Earth to be a girl dad. He would’ve been an amazing father to a son, but I think deep down he knows he was meant to be a girl dad. He is the best girl dad and his girls adore him. I love watching him love our kids, it just all feels so right and complete now.

I am adjusting pretty well I think for being a new mom again in the middle of a pandemic. Yes I am a new mom. I know I’ve been a mom before, but that was a mom to Evelyn. Being a mom to Hazel is completely new to me. She is a totally different person and her needs are a lot more different than Evelyn’s were. I was a bit naive feeling like I had this gig down already, but I quickly learned that each of my children are different and I have to be different for them. I am soaking up all these newborn moments that I didn’t with Evelyn. I would never say never, but Hazel is most likely our last and I am also excited to put the baby making stage behind me and start the next phase of my life as a mom: raising these girls and showing them the world. Being a new mom during a pandemic has raised a lot of questions, nerves, and insecurities in me. But I’m ready to take on those challenges as well to show my girls how to be resilient.

I feel incredibly blessed with my family. We were deeply touched by all the well wishes we’ve received over the last few months with Hazel, the meals sent to us, and gifts we got. Thank you so much to all our friends and family for the outpouring of love and support for our sweet Hazel.

All photos are courtesy of our cousin and talented photographer - Danielle Mancino Photography