Gluten Free S'mores Board

HAPPY BACHELORETTE MONDAY FRIENDS. This week I had a sweet tooth so another s’mores board it was! These are so easy to put together and you can do them inside no problem! We’ve done this a couple of times in the past for a summer party, another bachelor night and then a movie night for Cruella… BTW, have you seen that movie?! It is BEYOND good! All you need is some chocolate, s’mores stuff and a little flame! But I will put exactly what we used below so you know what to get and/or can get some ideas!

This week is obviously a S’mores Board and next week will be a Charcuterie for Three board. Later on I have a Mediterranean Charcuterie board planned and a Popcorn Bar coming your way as well! That’s about all fluff I have for you so here is what you will need! Lol

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Here’s what you will need:

• Gluten Free Oreos

• Gluten Free S’mores Cookies

• Gluten Free Graham Crackers

• Smartfood Sweet and Salty

• Highkey Chocolate Mint Cookies

• Partake Chocolate Chip Cookies

• “Heat Cooking Fuel”

• Jumbo Marshmallows

• Toasted Vanilla Marshmallows

• Ghiradelli Chocolate Squares

• Hershey’s Chocolate Bars

• Nutella

• Peanut Butter to drizzle

• Roasting sticks

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What are your thoughts so far on this season? I actually really like it and think that she was a good pick. I was defiantly hesitant at first, but I am glad she is the bachelorette! I am also excited for Michelle’s season, she was my first pick! I want to know your thoughts and opinions on the guys as well. I am a big fan of Michael A! Let me know in the comments below or you can send me an email at tarynintotravel@gmail.com!

Small Summery Charcuterie Board

If you have been here for awhile then you know about two years ago I started doing charcuterie boards for Bachelor/Bachelorette viewing parties that I went to with my friends. Fast forward through a pandemic and a move to Orlando, I am finally back to doing them and I am so excited! I mentioned on Instagram a week or so ago that I felt like I was back on my game with creating and making fun recipes, appetizers and fun drinks. This is one of the ways that I can share those things with you guys! This week is a Small Summery Charcuterie Board and next week will be a Gluten Free S’mores Board. Later on I have a Mediterranean Charcuterie board planned and a Popcorn Bar coming your way as well! Also keep in mind that these blog posts are fairly short because I can only tell you so many things about the meats and cheeses on the board lol.

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Here’s what you will need:

• Vintage Irish Cheddar Cheese {always}

• Double Creme Brie

• Black Pepper Bellavitano

• Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese

• Honey Goat Cheese

• Le Gruyere

• Bite Size Dry Salami

• Prosciutto Italiano

• Pepper Salami

• Hot Calabrese

• Balckberries

• Basil for garnish

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I guess I am also curious.. are you watching The Bachelorette? Have you before? I started watching Coltons season and never looked back lol. I think as long as seasons are coming out I will be making snacks and watching! What looks the like yummiest thing on this board? Let me know in the comments below or you can send me an email at tarynintotravel@gmail.com!

Memorial Day Cocktail: Strawberry Watermelon Frozen Seltzer

I feel like there is a common theme on my website and it is drinks and food lol it might not always be exactly either of those things but pretty close and at least one of them is involved somehow. Originally I was going to put together a whole blog post covering a themed Memorial Day party but I just don’t think that many people are going to be having huge get togethers {which I totally get!} yet. BUT I DO think that people will still be celebrating and more importantly, enjoying a yummy cocktail. Let me help you with it! I love drinks that have fruit in them, it just makes it feel more fresh. SO I put together a fun Memorial Day inspired cocktail for your weekend!

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WHAT YOU WILL NEED

• BLUEBERRIES

• STRAWBERRIES

• A COUPLE OF APPLES

• WATERMELON STRAWBERRY VIZZY SELTZER

• WATERMELON VODKA

• SKINNY SYRUPS SRAWBERRY WATERMELON FLAVOR

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INSTRUCTIONS

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I want to know what you guys think of this Strawberry Watermelon Frozen Seltzer if you make it! It is delicious and super simple to make! This sangria also got tastier the longer that it was in the pitcher. Maybe plan to make it in the morning if your get together is in the afternoon/evening? Let me know yours in the comments below and if you make the drink tag me in stories and I will share it! You can email as well if you have any questions at tarynintotravel@gmail.com.

Spooky Halloween Sangria

Spooky Halloween Sangria

I always say that these posts are going to be short and sweet so I’m not sure why I start each post by saying that! Lol but I also think that I say that so if you’re new here you don’t to this post and be like “OMG I don’t care how she stumbled upon this recipe standing on a cliff looking out into the water looking at a baby dolphin learning to swim” hahaha! Some recipes just need to get to the point!

I wanted to create a Spooky Halloween Sangria recipe for you guys with things that you probably have in your kitchen! Much like a charcuterie board, I think to some extent…especially with a sangria, you can play around with it and make it what you like. There is a little more wiggle room with sangria because you can literally use any fruit you like, any wine you like.. red or white! You can add rum, brandy, vodka.. pretty much anything you have on hand! So without further ado… I will share the recipe!

This recipe makes one pitcher so if you are wanting more for like a get-together or something, double it! OR triple the recipe depending on how many people are going to be drinking it!

Ingredients/What you will need

• 2 bottles of red wine {I used Apothic Red}

• Rum {1 1/2 cups}

• Splash of apple cider {I added the apple cider to each glass to gauge sweetness depending on each person}

• Simple syrup {optional, I thought the apple cider made it sweet enough!}

• 4 red delicious apples {mostly for the color}

• 1 large container of blackberries

• black sugar sprinkles for the rim of the glass

• honey {to get the sugar to stick to the rim

• pitcher

• skulls {I got mine here}

I would love to see if you decide to make Spooky Halloween Sangria for your Halloween festivities! What are your plans for the weekend? Do you have any? Let me know in the comments below or you can send me an email at tarynintotravel@gmail.com!

At Home Birthday Ideas

Since we have been at home, I know that so many things have been canceled, postponed, or rescheduled. But birthdays are not something that you can cancel or reschedule! Its your day or someone special in your lives day! There are so many ways to make their day special! For example, last week it was Dustin’s birthday {my husband} and obviously we couldn’t go do anything but I was determined to have a fun and special day! I don’t know about you guys but birthdays are big in our house! Usually we go on a weekend getaway or if that’s not an option we would go out to dinner and drinks afterward but I definitely had to get creative.

I decided to literally pick a theme and go with it.. like as if I was planning a 6 year olds birthday party lol I went with a Mario Party theme. We love playing Mario Party for a date night at home so I took the theme and ran with it. If you’ve been around for awhile then you know I love a good theme!

For the Mario Party I went to Etsy.. 1. the shipping was faster than Amazon and 2. I was shopping small which I loved! Don’t get me wrong, I still got things from Target, but I tried to get the decorations from Etsy. I didn’t go crazy either.. I just got a few things that would make the apartment fun for him to wake up to on his birthday!

I grabbed Mario themed cookies, a Mario party banner and a giant Mario balloon plus a ton of regular balloons that I blew up all by myself which made me feel very accomplished.

| Giant Mario Balloon | Mario Cookies | Small Regular Balloons | Mario Party Banner | Super Mario Party Game |

Obviously this won’t be everyones cup of tea, so I came up with a few other ideas to add to the list!

1. Nerf gun wars - no brainer and this is so fun! We have nerf guns and play with them all the time {yes we are adults lol}

2. Around the clock gift opening - This is a fun one.. get a bunch of smaller gifts and say every 2-3 hours that person gets to open a new present!

3. Drive By parades - Organize with friends and family to drive by and wave/honk at the birthday boy/girl!

4. Movie Marathon with a themed dinner - you could pick any trilogy that I list in this post here! So many fun options!

5. Chopped at Home - you can read more about this one here!

6. Pick a country and make dinner and a dessert - so easy! It could be somewhere you have gone or somewhere new. If its somewhere you both have been then you get to reminisce!

10 Things to do When You're Bored

10 Things to do When You’re Bored

1. Beading - I mentioned in stories a few weeks back that I started a new hobby. It has been something that I have had everything in and out of my Amazon cart for about 6 months before I finally decided to do it! Its so fun to not have any rules and get to make something! There are so many sizes and shapes of the beads. Its actually really relaxing as well. I am able to turn on a movie or a show and bead! I linked everything that I need here!

2. Pigment Coloring App - This is really only an idea if you have an iPad or some type of tablet but I love this app so much. There is a paid version but I just use the free coloring pages {there are tons and more are being added all the time!}. For me its calming because I am so focused on the coloring that my brain isn’t thinking about 100 other things. Its actually something that turns my brain off.

3. Take a drive - My mom keeps texting me and saying “Go eat lunch in Vermont!”. We live like an hour from Vermont and she thinks it will be like the perfect afternoon activity. I know not everyone lives super close to a different state but really what I mean is go for a long drive with a stop at the end. You could easily choose a park that is like an hour away and take a packed lunch and eat in your car! Just for a change of scenery!

4. Take an online course! There are so many businesses and companies that are offering free classes right now. I will link a couple below!

   1. Nikon is offering free Photography classes in April! Link is here.

   2. Duolingo has free language lessons! Find those here.

   3. iTunes U has SO many free classes to take! There were a ton that looked interesting about Earth Month! I linked where you can find those here.

5. Join a book club! Facebook has so many good options. Here are the two that I am currently in! Caila’s Corner and we are reading “The Two Lives of Lydia Bird” and Lynzy & Co, we are reading “Love Does”. I love being a part of these two because it gives me an assignment and a sense of community with the group!

6. A classic puzzle - This is something that I like to do that is not a sit down and complete until its done. I like to open a puzzle and work on it as I please until its complete. It might be a couple of hours, it might be a couple of days. It just depends! I linked to a ton of puzzles in this blog post here.

7. Learn a new skill! YouTube is a great resource for this! You can pick up so many new skills from youtube all for free I might add. Here is a list of some of the ones I could think of!

   • origami

   • Beading

   • Knitting

   • Making Soap

   • Kickboxing

   • Starting a bullet journal

   • Calligraphy

8. Work on a goal - Playing off of the last idea, make a goal for something small that you have always wanted to do. Here are some examples: work on your handstands or being able to do the splits.. Play with eyeshadow {I am hopeless with eyeshadow lol}, perfect the winged liner look! Learn to curl you're hard.. another thing I realllllly can’t do lol

9. Cook something - You could do the “At Home Chopped Challenge that I talked about in this blog post here. Learn how to make something that you had one one of your favorite vacations.. {Pasta from Italy, tatziki from Greece, copycat recipes from Disney World! Disney Hungry has a ton of good copycat Disney Recipes!} They don’t all have to be desserts! You can make so many fun things! Get creative!

10. Start that crazy long movie series! I love watching movies like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings that you can really get into the characters and watch them grow. There are so many movie series’ to binge.. I made a list!

    • Harry Potter

    • Lord of the Rings

    • The Hobbit

    • Star Wars

    • Jurassic Park

    • Pirates of the Caribbean

    • Avengers

    • Any combination of Marvel movie sets {Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant Man}

    • Star Trek

    • Divergent Trilogy

    • Fantastic Beasts

    • Pitch Perfect

    • Transformers

    • Twilight

    • X-men

11. Watch the Disney Nature documentaries on Disney+! I loved Penguins, Elephant, and Dolphin Reef! Seriously so cute and you fall in love with the little animal families in each of them for sure.

12. Animal Crossing - If you have a Nintendo Switch this game is so much fun. Also if you want to be friends, let’s do it! I’m not even sure how to do that lol but I will figure it out.

This is defiantly one of those blog posts that I will add to as I think of more things! I see new ideas all over the place every day! I know that this time has been really hard on all of us but I will say that I think the creativeness from people has been amazing! So many amazing ideas have come from this all. If you can think of something comment below and I will add it to the list!

Chopped Challenge at Home

This was probably our best idea yet for being stuck at home! Honestly it was so fun and actually a great way to use ingredients that you have in your pantry or fridge! We have done this twice now and it was jut as fun the second time. A couple of things to remember and just accept.. The kitchen is GOING to be a mess, there WILL be a ton of dishes, but you WILL have a blast and create such fun memories!

The way that Dustin and I did this was I picked 5 ingredients for him and he picked 5 ingredients for me. We decided that one of the things that we needed to pick for the other person is a protein just to set the pace for the meal that they will have to make. Like for example I chose ground chicken and that really threw him for a loop and directed the meal a bit.

Chopped Guidelines

• Must use all 5 ingredients in the dish

• Have all ingredients in the dish on the plate

• 40 minutes to complete the dish

• We both also choose an additional 6th item to give to each other 10 minutes into the challenge {such a fun twist!}

• Don’t pick a starch because it might sway the meal too much one way {picking pasta noodles pretty much ensures you're getting pasta.. that kind of thing!}

• Preheat the oven to desired temp {we did 400}, boil a large pot of water and start any other cooking tools you want to use. We did a fryer but you could also preheat like a George foreman, etc.

I would say if you are wanting to do this with your family just choose partners and do it the same way we did! If there is an uneven number then for example, person 1 would choose food for person 2 to cook and person 3 would eat that food for dinner and so on!

Another thing that we thought could be fun so this can be like a once a month kind of thing is to choose themes! Like dinner foods, sandwiches and a side, gourmet breakfast, desserts, chicken dinner.. I mean the list goes on and on! You could pull any theme and it would be so much fun! I think next tie we do this we will do sandwiches and a side!

Christmas Grazing Table

This is honestly one of my favorite things that I have ever put together.. I love the way that it turned out! I’ve said this before but I think that when you have guests its hard to gage when people are hungry and I like having food around to snack on that people don’t feel weird about grabbing. It is so easy to put something like this {of any size} together that people can pick and choose what they like and don’t like and then you aren’t having to worry about making something that everyone will want to eat. Here is my Christmas Grazing Table!

The Setup

The decor that is on the table is 100% from Target! They are all old but you could easily find new versions of these things. The trees I found at the dollar spot along with most of the houses. The jingle bells, lighted garland and the pine cones are from the Christmas area of Target and then there are a couple of the houses that are Hearth and Hand!

The food

Cheeses

Brie Wheel

Manchego Cheese

Red Wine Soaked Goat Cheese

Dijon Herb Rubbed Fontina 

Dubliner Cheese

Aged Cheddar

Cabot Clothbound Cheddar 

Havarti Cheese

Blue Cheese

Vermont Extra Sharp Cheddar

Mozzarella Balls

Meats

Prosciutto

Genoa Salami

Pepperoni

Chorizo

Extras 

Marcona Almonds

Table Crackers

Simple Mills Almond Flour Crackers

Macaroons

Pistachios

Cranberries

Blue Cheese Stuffed Olives

A {Gluten Free} Friendsgiving Brunch

Here it goes!

I put it up to vote last week of weather you guys would like to see a Traditional Thanksgiving, Brunch, or a Fiesta and Brunch won by a landslide! Today I am sharing the details from our Friendsgiving brunch and I can’t wait for you to see how it turned out! Most of the things we made I found a recipe for on Pinterest and I will link you to it so you can get all the details from the original maker. I will also share if I tweaked or added anything to the recipe. But there are a couple of things that I created like the Orange Cranberry Mimosas!

Hash brown Breakfast Casserole - This recipe came from Kelsey from The Blue Cheese Bungalow {how cute is that name?!}. We loved this casserole, it was so yummy! Cheesy and delicious.

Maple Brown Sugar Bacon - I used Alea’s recipe from Premeditated Leftovers. I saw the picture of this recipe on Pinterest and I was sold. Then we made it and OH MY GOODNESS, it was GOOD. I had never had sweet bacon at all and I can’t believe that I waited this long to have it.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Waffles - This was a super yummy recipe from Audrey at Mama Knows Gluten Free. Very good, I put syrup on them but they were so yummy that I could have eaten them just by themselves.

Yogurt Bar - This is pretty self explanatory and I just put out yogurt with gluten free granola, brown sugar, chocolate chips and thinly sliced apples! Easy and delish!

Orange Cranberry Mimosas - See the ingredients and instructions below!

For the decor, I wanted to keep it simple because we made all of the food as well, I went with an easy burlap table runner and some small white pumpkins! I will link all of the details below. I had so much fun putting this together and it really felt like the perfect combination of easy and delicious! As always I would love to know if you end up trying anything from this post, it would make my day!

4 Wine and Cheese Pairings

I feel like this has just been the week of hosting blog posts, but who am I kidding- I love it! I wanted to share some wine and cheese pairings that you can put out at your next get together. I love taking the guessing out of what you are serving and you can just enjoy the company! These are my four go-to’s when I am having people over. I know that I post really large charcuterie boards but you can put out something as simple as cheese and cracker, it doesn’t need to be extravagant. I will give you some examples below!

Pino Noir and Brie

This is always my first thought, especially in the fall and winter. I love pairing a creamy, buttery brie with a pino noir. You can always leave it as just brie and wine or you can elevate the cheese and add a jam! My perfect combination is brie with rhubarb jam and Simple Mills almond flour crackers! Its both salty and sweet!

Pino Grigio and Gouda

Gouda is a bit heavier but the Pino Grigio complements the cheese with its lighter taste of the Pino Grigio! If you are wanting to add a bit to the cheese you can pair it with dried apricots and table crackers! If you are gluten free I like the Schar Gluten Free Table Crackers. This is such an easy combination to put together because you can just set out the gouda, apricots and crackers on the cheese plate and your guests can decide how they would like to eat it!

Riesling and Goat Cheese

This is one of the yummiest combinations! I love goat cheese… I mean LOVE it! We had a great combo at on our Halloween Grazing Table that was the goat cheese log rolled in fig jam and crushed pistachios! Another option would be the goat cheese log rolled in honey and then rolled in a mixture of finely chopped apricots and almonds! The sweet Riesling will complement the dense texture of the cheese!

Merlot and Aged Cheddar

This combination is SO yummy in the winter and so easy because it doesn’t need to be really paired with anything. I like crackers paired with the cheddar! You really don’t need much more, the cheddar goes nicely on table crackers as well! Or if you like the saltiness, you can use Simple Mills Crackers instead!

Here are my favorites for entertaining a small crowd!

As always, I am here for questions! I would be THRILLED to help you figure out what you will be serving for your next get together. No matter how large or small, just ask!