Thanksgiving aftermath

I cannot believe it is only 6:52pm. It feels like midnight.
Dinner was marvelous. We all ate pretty lightly, saving room for all the desserts. Of course we have our purests, those who only eat apple or pumpkin pie, and then those of us who have "Russian Dessert" (oneovich). I did most of the cleanup myself for a change. John will probably come around and clean up after me later. I can barely move now. I have no plans to hit the malls tomorrow. 99% of my shopping is done and the rest can be accomplished online. No need to battle any crowds. Tomorrow morning I will be at my aquacise class at the Y at 8:30. I'll bet that it will be a small class.

Happy Thanksgiving! This is my yummy bird when it came out of the oven. I love preparing Thanksgiving dinner but it sure is a lot of work. Chop, cook, clean, repeat, repeat, repeat etc. The turkey went into the oven at 9:25 and was done at 12:37. While it was cooking I prepared my stuffing/dressing which I cook in my crockpot, the sweet potato streusel casserole, the cheese and cracker platter. The bird was all carved and the roasting pan cleaned and put away by the time Debbie and Jimmy arrived at 2:30. Mom made the giblet gravy (James, that's my secret recipe for gravy!) Right now we're enjoying the cheese and crackers and shrimp and fruit while the main meal finishes cooking. Oh the smells coming from my oven are heavenly!

Here's our menu:
Shrimp cocktail
Goat Brie, Muenster, Cheddar and Tallegio, cream cheese with curried apple chutney with crackers and bagette slices, chips

Fresh fruit

Roast turkey
Gravy (ala Mom)
Cranberry Orange Relish
Jellied Cranberry Sauce
Sweet Potato Casserole
Sausage Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Artichoke Casserole
Corn Casserole

Pecan Pie
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Ice Cream

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

According to the calendar there are 34 days until Christmas but if you were to look at my dining room table and in the corners of my house you would think that Christmas was tomorrow. I spent 2 hours today visiting Christmas Fairs at the Methodist Church, Catholic Church and American Legion. I found some cute earrings at the Methodist Church. They get me in the holiday mood.
My Christmas shopping is just about done and today I spent a couple of hours wrapping and organizing my packages into groups. I have stuff for my family (I just remembered there are a few boxes for my husband hidden in the closet), stuff for the family my club has "adopted" for this year, gifts for Secret Santa exchanges, Christmas parties etc, etc. I can almost see the top of my dining table again, which is good because in just 5 days we'll be gathering around the old turkey platter on this table.
I still need to formalize my menu and make my shopping list. I haven't made the cranberry relish yet but I did pick up the cranberries and put them in the freezer when they first hit the markets.
We don't know if we are getting a turkey from Honda this year or not so who knows if we'll have a main course or just all the side dishes? Works for me.
Last night my Local Scrap Shop had part 2 of the Christmas Card Swap. I got some fantastic cards! I posted a few of the cards that I received and two cards that I made (the Joy card and the Snowflake).



The Snowflake was lifted from Christmas Cricut's Easy Card Monday this week. Joy was cut with my Cricut for another card but I didn't like it so I just created this simple card with a new rubber stamp and some embossing powder.

I can't quite get the hang of posting pictures in line with text.