Month: November 2012

It’s so-called “Black Friday,” which I have never liked and only participated in once (and that was to get a $20 season of the Simpsons at Best Buy).  I’m at work though, and might do some online browsing to see if I can find a good price on a Blu-Ray player.  Or I might wait until Monday.  We’ll see.

Yesterday ended up being a nice day.  We successfully cleaned the house and went grocery shopping on Wednesday evening, and I made the pie as well.  Then Thursday morning we lounged around in bed for a while, then went to Waffle House for breakfast, then came back home and started peeling potatoes.  Prepped the mashed potatoes and the sweet potato casserole and stuck them in the fridge for later.  Started dressing the turkey around 12:30 or so, and had that in the oven by 1:00-ish.  This year I followed the roasting and gravy instructions much more closely than I did this summer and things turned out for the better because of that (imagine!).  I took the neck and giblets and made a stock with them while the turkey was roasting. 

While I was doing all this cooking, Matt and Bitey spent a good portion of the afternoon asleep.  I took several pictures, but am refraining from posting more than one….

(Aren’t they cute?!  🙂 )  While I was sitting around trying not to make too much noise, and waiting for the turkey to cook, here’s one of the living room….

Anyway.  So it was a pleasant afternoon, full of good smells and naps and football once Matt woke up.

The food all turned out well – I was (and am) so pleased!  The turkey ended up being so juicy; when I was carving up the rest after dinner to put it away, there was still juice coming out.  The gravy turned out perfectly, and the stuffing – which was from a box – wasn’t bad at all.  The sweet potato casserole was delicious as always, and the mashed potatoes and green beans and rolls were as well.  The rolls were from Aldi too, but they were still good.  Bought cranberry relish in a can too – mmmmmm.  Obviously I took some pictures of the tablescape….

So pretty!!!  I feel accomplished.  🙂 

And the pie turned out perfectly as well.

 

So all-in-all, it was a pleasant and successful Thanksgiving.  I did miss my family a few times throughout the day, and I wish we could have been in Oak Ridge, but oh well – next year I’m hopeful that we’ll be more financially (and otherwise) stable.  I did have several things that made me feel closer to the family though, besides all the traditional foods.  I used Grandma’s plates for dinner (and her dining room table which has known many Reeve Thanksgivings at East Drive), plus the carving set and the blue sugar and cream dishes also came from East Drive.  I made Aunt Carol’s sweet potato casserole and Grandma’s Magic Chocolate pie, and wish I’d had time/energy to make one of Mom’s bread recipes. 

Now I suppose I can start thinking about Christmas…………….

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I’m stuck at work being SUPER bored.  AP&T has normal hours today and Friday (though I hear rumors that the owner lets everyone leave early on Friday…) but is closed tomorrow, of course.  I know lots of people have today off, so I expect it’ll be pretty slow all day.  I’m working on a map quilt currently, and have been embroidering pretty much every day at work for about a week.  I started unpacking everything this morning and realized that I left my damned NEEDLE at home!!  Kinda hard to embroider without a needle.  So I can’t do that until after lunch, provided I remember to get my needle when I’m home.

I do have some books here which I could be reading, but I’d so much rather be crafting.

This year has been trying, and we’ve been living on only my paycheck for about a month now.  Matt did get paid today which is awesome (AWESOME), but we don’t feel like we have enough extra cash to travel to Knoxville for Thanksgiving this year.  Our plan B was to spend the holiday with Matt’s family here, but turns out they’re getting together an hour outside of town and Matt has to work early on Friday, so that’s not going to work either.  (His family is so disorganized…it makes me want to pull out my hair somtimes.) 

SO, we decided to do Thanksgiving at home for ourselves.  And I’m actually not disappointed.  I expect it will be a relaxing day – I want to go to Waffle House for breakfast (semi-traditional) and then stay home cooking and being with my husband the rest of the day.  I think it will be nice.  It will also mark 5 years that we’ve been a couple, which is kinda special too.  🙂

I bought a small turkey the other day which is thawing in the fridge, and I’m making gravy, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and Grandma’s Magic Chocolate pie for dessert.  Since I’m the only one doing the cooking, I’m taking some shortcuts — I’m going to buy the stuffing mix, premade pie crust dough, and probably rolls.  The rest of everything is getting made from scratch, though.  😀  I love Thanksgiving food!!  And this year we’ll have leftovers!! 

Matt’s doing better, guys.  I’m not supposed to blog about him, per Matt, so this is all I’ll say.  But I’m feeling like things are MUCH MORE STABLE right now.  And I’m hopeful that they’ll stay that way – at least for a while.  But no details.  🙂

(Doesn’t he look happy?  That’s Bitey on his shoulder, of course.)

While I’m at it and being bored, here are some other pretty fall pictures from a day hike to Hidden Lakes.

And here’s one of Bitey, because I like taking pictures of him.  I was re-covering this lamp shade and he decided to jump in, which was super funny because he could barely fit himself between the spokes on the top.