This post was sponsored by 7UP® but all thoughts and opinions are my own. You must be 21 or older to consume alcoholic beverages.

Will this winter never end? Ever since a recent trip that our team went on to Miami, we are all very much over this dreary NYC cold.

To escape the dull, colorless winter, we decided to brighten our spirits and bring some inspiration to our studio by throwing a little spring cocktail party, complete with bubbly cocktails and bites.

Since winter has put us into a bit of a funk, we wanted to play off of a sweet, fun taste for our party food. I took a trip to our local ShopRite, where they carry a wide variety of sodas. I was inspired by the 7UP® Cherry and picked up a few different versions of the soda to use in recipes for the party.  Not sure where your nearest ShopRite is? You can locate it here.

After I brought the variety of 7UP, I had purchased back to our studio, Maggie and Natalie got to work styling the cutest spring cocktail party you’ve ever seen.

Using metallic cracked ice ribbon, they created a patterned gold and silver striped wall, which helped transform our space and created the perfect backdrop.

With spring in mind, we used a color palette of pink, red and mint throughout our decor.  Thankfully, our favorite round bar cart fit perfectly within this color scheme, so the ladies used it to hold our cake stands, vintage glass bottles with tulips and fun white paper plates with gold metallic stars.

Our party food included 7UP infused recipes such as Simply Beautiful Eating’s sweet and saucy meatballs and Maggie’s adorable cherry cupcakes.

Maggie wanted to keep it simple when prepping the cupcakes while still incorporating that unexpected 7UP flavor. We used a box mix for the cake, subbing 1/2 cup of water for 1/2 cup Diet 7UP Cherry. For the icing, Maggie used an electric mixer to combine the following ingredients:

- ½ cup butter
- 2-2½ cups confectioners’ sugar
- 1 tablespoon 7UP Cherry
- 1 teaspoon maraschino cherry juice or syrup
- pink food coloring gel (optional)

Maggie added pink food coloring to half of the frosting, distributed the frosting into plastic baggies, and made a small cut in the bottom corners to pipe the frosting in layers on the cupcakes. She added maraschino cherries and a small piece of our favorite paper straws into the frosting for an added touch.

Cocktail meatballs are a real winner at parties and you can make them in advance so you’re well prepped the day of to just give them a quick re-heat.

Here’s Simply Beautiful Eating’s recipe for these beauties...

Meatball Ingredients:

- 2 pound ground chicken
- 2 eggs
- 2 slices of challah turned into breadcrumbs (sub 2 pieces of matzo for the challah if it’s passover! Soak the matzo in boiling water, wring out the water before adding to the mix)
- Salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup regular breadcrumbs

Sauce

- 1 jar of spaghetti sauce
- 1 small tin of tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons of brown sugar

Other

- 1 14 oz can whole cranberry jelly
- 1 cup 7UP

- In a large bowl, Mix all of the meatball ingredients together.
- In a large pot, stir together the sauce ingredients
- Bring to slow boil.
- Keeping your hands wet, roll balls the size of walnuts out of your meatball mixture and drop into the sauce and cover - simmer on low for one hour.
- Add one tin of whole cranberry jelly and a 1 cup of 7UP.
- Cover and simmer one more hour.

Feeds 8

The girls skewered these with toothpicks for easy eating and BOY, were they delicious!

To really pull together this party, I made a 7UP infused Moscow Mule with cherries to garnish. They were so stunning!

Here’s how you make it...

Ingredients:

- 2 cups Diet 7UP
- vodka
- ginger beer
- fresh lemon
- fresh mint
- maraschino cherries
- ice

- In each mug, combine 1 oz. vodka, 2 oz. ginger beer and 2 oz. 7UP. Stir gently with straw to combine ingredients.
- Squeeze a lemon wedge into each glass.
- Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint, a maraschino cherry skewer and a lemon slice.

We served these in our favorite copper mugs and I’ve gotta tell you… they were the perfect addition to our already delicious cocktail party.

With our food + drinks beautifully displayed, we popped some tunes on just in time for our friends to show up to PARTY!

This cocktail party could not have turned out more gorgeous, and all of the recipes were to die for.

For a limited time, ShopRite is offering a $1 off an 7UP purchase when you download a coupon on ShopRite’s website. You can also go to MixItUpwith7UP.com for more ideas and inspiration for fun ways to use 7UP in a bunch of different recipes.

Now let’s do this, Spring!