As the ice cubes in my Water­ford tum­bler tin­kle against one another, I draw the last sip of my Bai­leys Irish Cream. Silky, slightly sweet, with a bit of a bite, I rise to pour another teensy night­cap. Ahhh, what a won­der­ful way to spend a few min­utes to myself enjoy­ing the last moments of the evening. In front of a burn­ing fire, kit­tens curled up at my feet and a good book in my hand, I have an epiphany, I must share this fab­u­lously divine expe­ri­ence with my Sweet Life read­ers!

First, let me con­fess, I don’t own any Water­ford (it’s not Ital­ian), I am usu­ally sip­ping at the com­puter,  I use fake logs, my kit­tens are at my feet..tearing around, chas­ing each other and I usu­ally read mag­a­zines or watch The Daily Show. But I DID have an epiphany. Yes, to give you a great, afford­able gift idea. With a bit of effort you can even add some­thing you have made with your own two hands-more on that later.

Where were we, yes, Bai­leys© Irish Cream. You may think giv­ing a bot­tle of booze is a cop-out at the hol­i­days. Unless you know the exact brand that a per­son will enjoy, it can seem like a lot of money for such a generic gift. Wine can be a good, even great gift, but again, unless you know the per­son will pos­i­tively swoon, you may feel the recip­i­ent didn’t ade­quately appre­ci­ate the $$$ fac­tor of your splurge for an impres­sive vin­tage. Also, most peo­ple tend to save a good bot­tle of wine for a spe­cial occa­sion and may even for­get who gave it them. If you won’t be toasted when the bot­tle is opened, what is the point really?

With a bot­tle of Bai­leys© you solve many issues in one fell swoop. Ahem…

Price: About $16.99 for a 750ml bot­tle. Dur­ing the hol­i­days, they have gift sets that con­tains a mono­grammed glass or 2 for the same price. A Bai­leys© mono­gram, not your friends. But still nice.

Gift Recip­i­ent: The best thing about this gift is that it is per­fect for any of your sophis­ti­cated Diva & Divo friends of legal drink­ing age who enjoy a tip­ple now and then.

Occa­sion: Per­fect Girl­friend gift, Cou­ples gift, Mom gift, Host­ess gift, Party Favor, Office gift etc.

Rea­son it is a great gift: The best part is that Bai­leys© can be opened and enjoyed imme­di­ately. Serve it with cof­fee after a great meal or at brunch. Write a lit­tle note encour­ag­ing the recip­i­ent to indulge in some “me” time in the evening. Way bet­ter than bunch of flow­ers for a host­ess gift, and she doesn’t have to find a vase.

New Fla­vors: In addi­tion to the Orig­i­nal Bai­leys© fla­vor, there is now Créme Caramel, Cof­fee and Mint Choco­late. I sam­pled all three new fla­vors. The Orig­i­nal is still my fav, the Cof­fee comes in a close second.

Stock­ing Stuffers: These fla­vors also come in a mini-bottle for about $1.99.

Shelf Life: The gift that keeps on giv­ing, as the Irish say. Well, they don’t really, but I do! A few sips at the end of the evening and the evening after that, and the evening after that.…

Gift Coupon: Bai­leys© is offer­ing up to $5.00 off on any fla­vor. Click here for REBATE.

I went to the Bai­leys© web­site to do the research and gather info about this post. I was pleas­antly sur­prised. It is really a well-done site with lots of enter­tain­ment and inter­ac­tiv­ity. I enjoyed spend­ing time click­ing on the dif­fer­ent links, “mak­ing” drinks, learn­ing more about the Bai­leys© story & mak­ing cows go-Moooooooo! I sug­gest you visit. I think you will enjoy and appre­ci­ate the effort they went through to help you get to know their product.

OK, get out your  art sup­plies, we have come to the Crafty– DIY sec­tion of the post. Don’t worry, it is pretty sim­ple. When you visit the Bai­leys© site you will notice that they give sev­eral easy to make drink recipes. I have cut and pasted all these into a handy-dandy book­let that you can print out, trim and give to your friends for an extra-special, per­sonal touch. You can say you went to all the trou­ble your­self, I don’t mind. See what a self­less Diva I am?- well you caught me on a good moment.

Click the PINK but­ton below to down­load a full color .zip file of the 3 page pdf. There are instruc­tions in the file. If you would like to see a mini-version of the files CLICK HERE- for view­ing before down­load only-don’t print from this..it will be tiny.

This will make 9 indi­vid­ual  3“x5” cards that can be tied together with a bow or placed in an envelope.

I was not com­pen­sated in any way for this mention-I did it out of the good­ness of my heart!

I hope you enjoy!