The More we get Together The Happier We'll Be

Last year at Thanksgiving I sat around in our apartment dreaming up plans for when we would have a house and could actually host the festivities. I printed me a copy of Tip Junkie’s Thanksgiving checklist and have been planning ever since. And I have to say that it turned out wonderfully.
After deciding to make the front room into a dining room, I started looking for a table. I’ll tell more about that saga another time, but for now I’ll say that I told The Professor on Monday that I was ready to give up. But miraculously on Wednesday morning we were heading out to pick up this table. And I couldn’t have planned it better on purpose:

I just have to mention the salt and pepper shakers. Most of the ideas were gleaned from various blogs, but my salt shaker broke last minute and I couldn’t find one I liked {or liked paying for} and while I was at Walmart to get all the stuff for the turkey{s} I had an epiphany about how to use the cheap-o salt and pepper shakers--just cover them with festive paper. It worked perfectly.

We had two tables in order to fit everyone, plus the kids table. We almost couldn’t get them to eat, they were so focused on coloring.

We had a wonderful dinner; everyone brought great food. I will post more about the food later too. {I found some excellent recipes.} After dinner/before the pies we had turkey races and then watched Napoleon Dynamite. Good times.


As is usually the case with me, I realized after the fact that I was too caught up in what was going on to remember to take pictures, but here is a shot of two cute cousins gearing up for Black Friday.

The other picture I should have taken was of all the dishes covering the counters afterwards! It took a couple of loads in the dishwasher to clean up after twenty people…