Grampie's New Year's Punch - For Aly's Birthday!

This Monday (June 14th) was a very special day - no, not because it was Flag Day, but because it was one of my best friends' birthdays!

Because Dan & I stayed in bed until 1pm with serious hangovers from celebrating Alyssa's birthday the night before (yes, we are still blaming it on Alyssa & Jess haha!), we knew the recipe Dan was going to make wasn't going to be a 4 hour one like the week before.

So, I searched through our recipe box for the easiest recipe possible and we found Grampie's New Year's Punch! Grampie is Dan's Great-Grandfather who Dan grew up living across the street from. He is such a wonderful man to sit down & talk to! Dan said we couldn't make it because it wasn't New Years, but when I asked him what he would like to cook instead, he gave in!

Because we were lazy bums all day, I had to rush to the grocery store to get the ingredients & we were STILL 1 hour late to Aly's bday (sorry!). We didn't have time to make the punch before hand so we grabbed all the ingredients & headed to the party.

Recipe for Grampie's New Year's Punch:
2 quarts 7-up or Sprite
1 quart Cranberry Juice
5th of Vodka
1/2 TBS Lime Juice
1 Lemon Peel
1 Orange Peel

Directions:
Put it all together in a LARGE container & have fun :)

****How'd it turn out?
DELICIOUS!
I'm sure if we had followed the recipe exactly it would have turned out even better, but because we forgot the recipe card, we didn't realize that it was just the lemon & orange peels, so we ended up cutting up the lemon & oranges & putting them in there. We also used blackberry flavored vodka, which gave it a little more flavor.

Lesson Learned:
1 - If you don't know how to make the recipe, bring the card with you OR have fun winging it :)
2 - Don't forget to put ice in it...it tastes much better cold.
3 - If you can make it before hand, soak the peels or fruit.
4 - If you decide to make a fun drink in front of your friends, they WILL convince you to put more alcohol in the drink (and if they don't convince you, they will sneak it in anyway!)
5 - Drink this drink sllllloooooowwwwwllllly ;)
6 - Who knew you could learn so much from making punch???

PS - This Friday (June 18th) I will be making MY first recipe for the summer since it's my first Friday off. I closed my eyes & chose the 4th recipe I randomly pulled out - Chris' Green Chili Burros! I am a little scared because the recipe looks hard, stay tuned to see how it comes out!