Vodka Strawberry Lemonade Cocktails

The popular drink for Easter yesterday was this Vodka Strawberry Lemonade Cocktail from Heather Christo's blog where I get a lot of my drink recipes. We had eleven of my family over for Easter dinner

and Lauren and Ari came over for breakfast.

We had our traditional family favorite, Dutch Babies, for breakfast with lots of fresh berries on them.

The drinks were great for both meals and everyone loved them.

I simplified the recipe quite a bit than the original due to the fact that I had a lot of other food projects going on for this Easter but everyone still loved even the simplified version. I used frozen strawberries instead of fresh and I bought frozen lemonade instead of squeezing all those lemons to make fresh lemonade.

You can serve them as virgin strawberry lemonade, too, without the vodka. I made two pitchers of them without the vodka and then added the vodka to those drinks who wanted alcohol (which was mostly everyone...)

It made for a fun pre-dinner cocktail hour, along with appetizers that my sister brought; artichoke dip, toasted seasoned garbanzo beans, cute little cucumber and radish bites and smoked green olives - all delicious.

We cooked a ham for dinner this year using The Pioneer Woman's

Glazed Easter Ham recipe that I've used before that is always finger-lickin' good.

I also made our traditional Easter Bread

and also these cute little Peeps chocolate birds nests for the table centerpiece.

I've made these a few times for Easter and they are always fun and festive looking. They were perfect this year because the daffodils are in full bloom right now so I went with a yellow theme to go with my lavender colored tablecloth.

There's nothing better than daffodils in the spring and I just love them.

The weather was a little cold this year, however, with bursts of sunlight here and there but it didn't rain (until evening) so we're always happy about that. My nephew's children even enjoyed some Easter egg hunting in our backyard.

It's always so fun to watch their excitement hunting Easter eggs.

For Easter dessert, I made the Coconut Cream Pie in Jars that I've made before for Easter. They are the perfect, festive-looking dessert for Easter and they are fun to decorate.

Earlier in the week, I decorated Easter eggs to use as name place settings at the table.

I didn't want to write whole names on the eggs so I got elegant letter stickers for first initials. It turned out we had too many "B"names and two "JB"s and two "BB"s, so I spelled out a couple names and just made do. Turned out, I also mixed up the hard boiled eggs and regular eggs so not all the colored eggs were hard boiled...which we found out when one was dropped by mistake. Oops! Easter was on April Fool's Day this year so I guess you could say that was my April Fool's joke on everyone. Despite all of that, they were actually very pretty.

This was our first Easter dinner in our house since we moved back to Seattle so I think I was especially motivated this year. It was really fun getting everything ready and it turned out very nice. And the important part is that everyone had a good time. Plus, I got another new cocktail to add to my list; a perfect drink for spring or summer.

Serves 10

2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries

2 cups sugar

Two-12 ounce cans frozen lemonade

vodka

mint, lemon slices and sliced strawberries as garnish

ice cubes

Make strawberry simple syrup

1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and strawberries and bring to a simmer until sugar is dissolved. You can add a little water, if you need.

2. Add to a blender and puree until smooth.

3. Strain through a fine mesh sieve into a pitcher.

4. Mix frozen lemonade according to instructions on the can. I mix the two cans of lemonade in a big bowl.

5. Add the strawberry simple syrup and mix well.

6. Pour strawberry lemonade into two pitchers.

To serve:

1. Fill glass completely with ice cubes and add some mint, lemon slices and strawberry slices.

2. Add 1 or 2 shots of vodka.

3. Fill glass with strawberry lemonade and stir well.

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