New Year's Eve - the last big party of the year, saying good bye to the previous year and hello to a brand new one!
We're not huge New Year's Eve partiers and more often than not my husband has to fly back to work on New Year's Day so our celebrations usually wrap up around 10pm (I know, we're super exciting). But not to worry, even though our celebrations wrap up around 10 we still cram a lot of great food and Okanagan living into New Year's!
Food:
Racelette - this is one of the many amazing traditions and ideas that I continue to love from my time in Switzerland. Racelette is a special type of cheese and method of melting that cheese. Like the other famous Swiss dish - fondue - Raclette is all about taking your time and enjoying the company thatuou are with, as well as the food. Other great ideas would be to make your own pizza (buy a pre-made crust), set up a taco bar and let everyone create there own, or even keep it simple with a home made charcuterie platter to let everyone just leisurely snack and catch up.
Drink
The Okanagan Valley has a lot of great Bubbly (Sparkling Wine) to choose from. Check out Summerhill for their Cipes Brut or for a fun (less expensive) Bubbly Social from Intrigue, or just get what you like - sometimes we even venture away from local wine (gasp - I know but it's true!) And don't forget about the kids, we've found some great sparkling fruit juices at the BC Tree Fruits market (and Save On as well).
Celebrate:
If we're lucky and News Years Eve doesn't fall on a work day we kick off the day with a family ski. New Years Eve is typically when winter holidays start to wrapping up at the hill, everyone is still in a festive mood but lines can be shorter than other days over the holiday.
Downtown Kelowna for the party and fireworks. Kelowna has a "New York New Years Eve" party. It took three years for someone to explain to me that the New York refers to the fact that the fireworks go off at 9pm here, which is midnight in New York. That is really the only New York thing about the party! The fireworks cap off the event at 9pm, leaving everyone with plenty of time to head off to other New Year's celebrations, or just to head home to warm up.
The After Party
After the fireworks we head home and try and stay awake - this I think is every working parent's New Years Eve challenge! We've discovered that setting up our favourite games, Seven Wonders, Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan helps us stay awake and enjoy the last few hours of the year.
In Kelowna you'll also notice that your neighbourhood might have some extra fire works. Over the year the additional fireworks have increased from a short three or four bursts of fire works to several minutes of pyrotechnics. The only issue is - we never know which direction they are coming from and it takes a bit of running from room to room to get a good view!
How ever you spend New Years I hope it is filled with Family, Food, and Fun!
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