I’m taking a break from my personal story tonight. While I wait for the right words to find me, I thought I’d share a really fun opportunity I had recently.
It all started with a package in the mail. (You have no idea how excited this made me!)
Which led to my tribute to World Market on Instagram. You should find me there and check it out , it went a little something like this …
They gave me a mission: create a Santa Fe inspired wine pairing (food + wine) people would enjoy. Now, normally wine and food — no. problem. I mean, I’ve lived in California, Italy, Germany, Texas – spent lots of time in France, Africa, Croatia — some of the greatest wine regions on Earth! But given the task of pairing wine with a southwestern meal, well. It through me for a loop.
To be honest, I did this whole thing twice; from purchasing, to preparing, to photographing. The first attempt was an utter disaster. An utter disaster that involved an overnight trip to Nana’s for the kids and a romantic dinner at home for us. Boo, not like we get either of those things very often and I really botched it up. Really. Bad.
Let’s just imagine a soup that tasted like drinking jalapeño water and call it a day. No need to share any more than that.
Still, I knew I could make this work. I just needed to rethink my approach. I had little time left to work with and no chance of a babysitter, so we adapted our Southwestern date night into a weeknight Santa Fe inspired family meal … sangria for us, sparkling punch for them!
It turned out fabulous! Sometimes, simpler really is better. Take a look. I based our whole evening off of my World Market finds, I really like how I was able to combine my love of color and pattern while still achieving a southwestern vibe.
Note: Only one of these candle holders cost more than $5 (I think it was $8) and all of the candles are flameless LEDs so we’ll be enjoying them for a long time to come. (Love!)
Note: My husband fell in love with these tortilla chips. He loves freshly made, still warm and nice & salty chips. These were pretty darn closed to the real thing.
For dinner, we served a simple Southwestern Chopped Salad
and I paired our meal with this super simple, 3-ingredient red sangria.
To keep this from being the world’s longest blog post, I will come back and share these easy weeknight recipes with you tomorrow. In the meantime, I think you should check out this incredible giveaway World Market is hosting right now.
UPDATE: Get the recipes for Southwestern Chopped Salad & 3-Ingredient Sangria here
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World Market Gourmet Getaway Sweepstakes
**Grand Prize package includes:
- A trip for two to to Santa Fe, New Mexico (this is a 5 day Trip for 2 to Santa Fe which includes airfare and hotel)
- Hands on Southwestern Cooking class with Master Chef
- Personally signed glossy cookbook
- Multi-course dinner at the acclaimed Geronimo
- Southwestern Foodie Tour with a cultural kick
- A $1,000 World Market gift card
** There will also be 3 runner up prize winners that will each receive a $500 World Market gift card!
**The Gourmet Getaway Sweepstakes runs from August 18, 2012 until September 21, 2012.
**If you share the sweepstakes with 5 of your friends (via FB share or email) you can receive 5 additional bonus entries. This is part of the registration process when entering. Users can also enter daily for more chances to win.
Find World Market on Twitter,Google+, Facebook and/or Pinterest!
This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group™, but all my opinions are my own!
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s so exciting Stacy, it sounds like you had a lot of fun! It’s inspiring to hear a real-life story–even though things may not have gone smoothly the first time it turned out beautifully!
Ohhh…your salad looks delicious!
Tonia@TheGunnySack´s last [type] ..What’s In The Gunny Sack? Link Party #55
I’m looking forward to seeing those recipes, the salad and sangria look delicious.
Tonya Staab´s last [type] ..A Sunday in San Diego
Looks like it turned into a great family night! I will definitely come back for that salad recipe!
You’re so cute in that picture! What am I saying?! You’re cute everywhere! That giveaway is SUPER exciting! Lisa~
That sound like a blast of fun! I bet that is was really exiting. I just wish I could go there right now, but I am really busy, and I also have kids, and my kids are very hard to deal with, but I don’t care because they are only four, and I should not care so much about behavior right now, but I still make sure they don’t do the certain behavior that they did. But I’m glad that next year will be 2013, so they can go to kindergarten, but I probably still wouldn’t be able to go there anyways due to the fact I am still busy when they are in school. I just might have some luck, because I get lucky a lot, and I just thought I might get lucky to have time to got there, I wish I’ll get my luck soon.
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