Toasting in the New Year with It's A Tradition {guest post}

Guest posting and gearing us up for New Year's is Tauni from It's a Tradition. I have been following Tauni since I started blogging. Her super cool wood and mod podge photo art was actually the very first feature here on FMA. She has such great projects that are so easy they will leave you bonking your head and saying "duh!" I really enjoy all her yummy treats too. She just makes everything look so easy! Let's see what she has for us today...

Aloha from the frigid (yet beautiful) Utah mountains!

I met Emily just after I started my blog It’s a Tradition. I think she might have been the very first person to have read it – I am grateful she did. She is one of the most wonderful, warm personalities I have ever “met.”

You’re all shopped out, you’ve attended more parties in the last month than in all of the rest combined and yet, there is one more to go…New Year’s Eve is wrought with tradition, from good luck dishes to unique holiday rituals – it’s the oldest of modern holidays.

One of the most celebrated of midnight moments is the toast.

This year, we decided to deliver holiday gifts with a bit of a shelf life – a bit of New Year’s bubbly with instructions on the perfect toast.

I made the bottle collars for my gifts a bit larger, because we had tied sparklers to the bottles. You can download a PDF of the bottle collar pictured above here or click on the image below and alter the image to fit your needs.

This is the first year the kids will be with us at midnight this year (even if it takes setting all the clocks in the house forward an hour or more) and we are looking forward to sharing a midnight toast with them.

We don’t drink alcohol and have been trying out all sorts of “mocktails” this year. We have settled on three different options…

Here are the recipes:

We’ve already been sharing a bit of toasting etiquette with them at the dinner table like:

• Putting the glass down before the toast is complete or simply holding the glass but not drinking to the toast is considered impolite.

• Raise your glass to the toast immediately after the toast is over.

• You only need to clink glasses with those in your immediate presence.

Of course, for those who prefer a more, well, digital moment…the Waterford Crystal Clink-clink app for the iPhone.

Cheers to you, cheers to me, here’s to a happy New Year’s Eve!

Thank you Tauni! Her bottle collars are such a festive gift idea! I am always looking for great mocktail recipes for my friends who prefer a virgin toast and also festive toasts for kids. I hope you all enjoyed a look into Tauni's New Year traditions. My husband and I thrive on traditions and ALWAYS have fondue dinner and dessert on New Year's Eve. How about you? What New Year's traditions do you have? Please, do share!!