Happy New Year!

Only a few more hours until 2009 is done and we're preparing for an easy New Years Eve at home.

So with some easy small bite ideas and a couple of New York City photos, we're all ready to ring in the New Year!

In addition to baked brie (wrap brie cheese in Pillsbury crescent roll dough and bake in the oven), our other go-to easy but tasty appetizer are blueberries with sweetened cream cheese on crackers.  To make the sweetened cream cheese, we take a bar of cream cheese, coat it in brown sugar, wrap it up in foil, and refrigerate overnight (Make sure you put the package in a Tupperware container as the sugar will melt and run).  The next day, the brown sugar will have melted into the cheese, leaving you with a sweetened spread to make this simple small bite.

Mini cheesecakes make dessert a snap.  Using Oreo cookies as the base, take any cheesecake recipe you have and pour the batter into lined muffin tins.  We added a dollop of nutella and melted chocolate on top (as decoration, and to conceal any cracks!)

Almost anything goes with cocktails - here we used guava juice (because of its pretty pink color) and mixed it with vanilla vodka and agave syrup.  Blueberries were added as garnish.

For larger parties, we also like to keep things simple by having bottles of sparkling wine available with pitchers of different fruit purees/juices.  This way the guests are easily able to serve themselves and enjoy different Bellini cocktails throughout the night.

No matter what your plans are tonight, we hope you have a wonderful time with good food, drink, and most of all, good company with family and friends.

Happy New Year!