Thankful

My Thanksgiving preparations began with the purchase of my first Turkey ever (OK, first raw turkey ever).  I was so excited buying it in the store and wanted to take a picture in it's new home to commemorate the occasion.

But in all seriousness I took lots of pictures to post here from the first Thanksgiving that we hosted.  We had family and friends visiting throughout the weekend but for the actual holiday my parents, SIL, and very special   family from CLT were in attendance for the Thanksgiving meal.  My mom and I started getting things ready in the morning and cooked the turkey all day.  

Yummmm, that Turkey is all ready to pop in the oven and get a tan! :) 

But before it was time to eat, even before all the guests arrived, we first had to set up the tables and decorate.  My mom is a florist and she made two beautiful arrangements using some of the pumpkins we had on the front stoop.  Below is the larger arrangement of the two, the second you might catch a glimpse of in pictures of the food table.

There were 7 of us total so we had to set up two tables to fit everyone.  The table we currently have in the living room is the kitchen table from our condo (now our dining room table).  We moved our current kitchen table from the kitchen to the foyer so everyone could still talk from table to table.

Here is the dining room table....

I made place cards for everyone out of magnolia leaves.  I used a gold paint pen to write the names on one of the leaves and tied two leaves together (one green side up, one brown side up) with gold ribbon.

This is the kitchen table set up in the foyer...

Cooking for the Thanksgiving meal was not as difficult as I had built it up to be in my mind.  Once I had everything figured out and a schedule in the back of  my mind, things just fell into place.  I made the side dishes and my mom handled the stuffing and gravy (phew, those were the two things I was worried about making myself!!).  It was nice to have an extra set of hands in the kitchen and someone with years of experience with actual Thanksgiving meal cooking.  

Here's our turkey just out of the oven.  Gobble Gobble Yummmm!  That turkey was able to feed many different visitors all weekend and we still had plenty left over to make Turkey hash to freeze for both our house and my parent's.

After the turkey came out of the oven, we heated and finished cooking the sides.  Doesn't all that food look yummy?  I forgot to take a picture before we called everyone in to start filling their plates so instead you get an action shot!

Here's a view of the desserts.  My mom made her famous pumpkin roll and I made the pumpkin pie.  I had left over pie dough so I added a leaf for extra decoration.  We also had freshly made whipped cream on hand.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for so many things.  I will not list them all here, but I thank God for each and every one of them!! :)