Swig Sugar Cookie and Dirty Diet Coke Birthday Party

Last week was McKay's 31st birthday.  I kind of waited to the last minute to plan something for his birthday, like the day before.  So I didn't have much fun to prepare anything extravagant.  I love to throw get togethers with our friends, but I'm not the type of party planner who has exquisite looking centerpieces, arrangements, and food hutches like you see on Pinterest.  Nope, that's not me.  I try to strive for simplicity because seriously, all that people care about at a party is that there's good company and good food.  Nobody is going to care about the printables, matching colors, and goodie bag.  Last month we traveled to Southern Utah and fell in love with Swig and I thought it would be so fun to throw McKay a Swig themed party full of cold sugar cookies and dirty Coke's!  I texted a bunch of our neighborhood friends letting them know of the birthday party and we hung out in our backyard, ate, drank, the kiddies ran around while the men played basketball and the girls chit chatted.  It was the perfect, non stress, relaxing, and carefree birthday party.  This is a great last minute birthday party idea because it's so easy.

The first thing you need for a Swig party is the dirty Coke drink.  For this party I used Diet Coke because I don't know anyone who's not watching their figure.  My sister Melanie posted the recipe for the Dirty Coke drink here.  

The next step is the delicious sugar cookies.  If you don't have time, you can go to your local Swig and pick up a bunch.  I don't have one close to me so I did some research and found a copycat recipe here, but I also found this one that looks very similar here (I haven't tried this one yet).  I made the cookies the day before, let them cool on a wire rack, and then put them in a glass casserole dish with a lid on it and put them in the freezer.  

They turned out really good.  What makes a Swig cookie is to have the icing room temperature and the cookie cold.  You ice the cookie right before you serve them.  Eating this sugar cookie is so delicious with the coconutty, limey, and creamy coke in hand.  This is 100% an Utah tradition, but it's a really easy and affordable way to feed a large crowd and have an excuse to get together with friends.  Hope you enjoy!