Ghirardelli Chocolate, Wine, Food, & Friends – The Perfect Housewarming

In case you didn’t know, my family and I moved to South Orange, NJ almost 2 months ago now. Oh yes we did.

I am in the city pretty much every single day, but for my kids having the new-found space and a huge house to run in is heaven. For me, being able to take a 30 minute train ride into my beloved city to get my fix? Also heaven.

We are loving our new life, our new space, and when we are not running around the city in search of adventures it’s nice to come home to relax.

I wanted to have some friends over to help warm up the place a little bit, bring some love and warmth that only good friends can bring and of course, as is tradition, share some great food and drinks as well.

For that extra special touch, I partnered with Ghirardelli Chocolates (oh yeah, the best of the best my friends) to try some wine pairings with their collection of their all natural Intense Dark chocolates.

Before my friends arrived, I laid out the chocolate on the table and had a whole plan on how the pairings would go. I want to say that it was all very well orchestrated and organized. I want to say that we lined up and tasted and paired and carefully savored the unique flavors of each chocolate and how well it went with this wine or that one.

But, the truth is, once my friends walked in and saw the chocolates, the tasting took a life of it’s very own. There was tasting with wine, beer, tequila, or nothing more than just chocolate.

The gathering of my friends and their children around the chocolate, wine, and good food filled my heart with joy. Of course, the chocolate was a huge hit. Everyone also got to go home with a wonderful gift box of Ghirardelli’s Intense Dark Midnight Reverie, Twilight Delight, and Evening Dream.

With all the excitement, we freely ate the chocolate and discussed our favorites, though my whole pairing plan started to fall to the wayside pretty quickly and the laughter of our children and our friends made this party a huge success. It all started the second they saw the chocolate when they walked in.

However, if you and your friends can contain yourselves, Ghirardelli’s website has a wonderful section on pairings for their Intense Dark chocolate that is worth checking out here.

Also a great idea, especially now that the air is a bit chilly and starting a little bonfire in the yard is a common practice when getting together with friends over drinks are s’mores with the small package chocolates. We have this planned for part two of the party which we will be hosting very, very soon.

Everyone is so busy with school, kids and work these days that there are so few moments in life when one has the opportunity to be surrounded by such genuine love from our friends. Sharing this day with them did really bring warmth to our home and we thank Ghirardelli for making the day extra sweet.

My partnership with The Ghirardelli Chocolate company was in an effort to bring awareness to their campaign Be an Intense Supporter, which they are doing in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Available for a limited time, beginning September 15 through the end of December 2011, specially marked pink ribbon packages of Intense Dark™ found at grocery and specialty retailers nationwide will carry a code inside the package redeemable for a $1 donation to NBCF. For each Intense Dark pink ribbon code entered at www.ghirardelli.com/intensedark up to $100,000, a donation will be made by Ghirardelli to help further the Foundation’s mission of saving lives through early detection and to provide mammograms, education and supportive services for those in need.

Check out some really great party ideas on Ghirardelli’s website in the Chocolate Celebration section and pick up some delicious recipe ideas in their Recipes section.

Disclosure: Ghirardelli Chocolates were provided courtesy of the same for the purpose of tasting. No request that I express any particular point of view was required. Laughter and good times came courtesy of our lovely friends with whom we had the pleasure of sharing all the sweetness.

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Tags: Events, food
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