A line drawing of three drinking glasses beneath the words in our cups

Let's Bring Back the Cocktail Hour

Let's connect offline just as much as we connect online.

Let's revive the practice of having friends, family, and neighbors over for drinks, for any reason or no reason at all.

Let's use the special glasses not just on holidays or for birthdays, but also on a Tuesday, or because there's a full moon, or just plain old because.

Cocktails bring us together. In Our Cups existed to bring the spirit and the joy of midcentury entertaining to people around the world through fabulous, lovingly chosen vintage glasses, cocktail sets, bar tools, and other home bar essentials. I also kept a blog (admittedly sporadically!) with recipes, party ideas, and other resources for people who love cocktails and entertaining.

Cheers!


 
Colorful cartoon of four smiling people with cocktails

It Started with Ratty’s

In the late 90s, shortly after my brother and sister-in-law bought a house, my brother set up a small home bar in a corner of their basement rec room, stocked it with bottles, glasses, and a jar of nuts, and dubbed it Ratty's, from his wife's nickname for him. The space wasn't fancy, but it was a great place to gather.

When I visited, the three of us would spend hours at Ratty's sipping drinks, talking about everything that mattered to our 20-something selves, and often hanging out and laughing for hours with whichever combination of their friends happened to be around.

One of my very favorite things to do is be out in the world sitting at an actual bar, watching the bartender, and chatting with whoever happens to hop up on the stool next to me, but these hours at my brother's basement bar made me realize just how awesome it is to also be able to offer (and experience) that same sense of joviality and camaraderie at home.

So for my 33rd birthday party, I hired a bartender to give my guests and me a crash course in mixing drinks, enlisted my friends to help stock my bar, and fell completely in love with entertaining—especially with good drinks—at home.

In the years since, my bar has morphed from being a handful of bottles tucked onto a bookshelf to an actual bar, and the glasses in which I serve my guests their drinks have gone from being the expendable multi-pack basics to glasses with more history, more character, and more stories.

My goal with In Our Cups was to inspire people not only to fall in love with vintage cocktail ware, but also to encourage them to fall in love with the idea of entertaining friends, family, and neighbors more often, even in simple and super-informal ways.

We're so weirdly connected these days, with hundreds of connections on social media but sometimes very little time for and with the people we really dig in real life. 

Let's bring out the good glasses, pour some great drinks, and change that.