Thanksgiving and It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's with family and friends.

On Saturday, I put up the office tree. It's a woodlands theme using burlap and red deco mesh.

The tree at home is beach chic. I used a beach hat as a tree topper with success (looks better in person) but the idea of a beach towels for the tree skirt wasn't as successful. Will come up with a different idea soon.

Happy Thanksgiving

It's appropriate that I would pull up an old banner I made from 2013 because it contains my former foster Declan - who is once again my foster. Yup, he was returned to me last weekend.

My Cousins And I Do Another Challenge

Warning - this one gets a little gross at the end. We do the Tin Can Challenge after eating a big Thanksgiving dinner (bad idea).

Thanksgiving Break

At my work place we traded Columbus day for the day after Thanksgiving meaning I get a four days off in a row. Initially I scheduled Wednesday off because I volunteered to cook the Thanksgiving feast; however, my cousin Sonya in Lakeland wanted everyone to come to her house. This worked out great because the plague hit my work and we were crippled by low attendance at work so taking Wednesday off would have been canceled anyway. (Really low, like only 32% of people one day.)Well, the plague hopped from work to friends and family because cousin Lea was too sick to drive over to Lakeland so thanksgiving dinner was moved to cousin Erica's which was OK by me because she only lives 10 minutes away. Sadly, Lea still wasn't up to joining us but Erica was able to invite her neighbor who lost his wife a couple years ago AND Aunt Mary joined us.

Aunt Mary & mom in front, cousins Sonya & Erica in back

 

Uncle Larry and cousin Lea's husband Don (Sonya & Erica's dad)

 

Gathering to say the blessing so we could eat! Erica's neighbor BJ, hubby Jerry, Uncle Larry, Erica's coworker Aaron and her sister Kelly, Sonya and her husband Tommy, Erica's daughter Sarah, and mom and Erica in the foreground with their backs to me.

 

We had a traditional thanksgiving feast of turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, dressing, deviled eggs, cranberries, desserts corn plus a tasty Indian rice dish brought by Erica's neighbor.

 

The next day mom and I cooked a turkey with the all the fixing again at my house so that we had leftovers. This has become a tradition to redo Thanksgiving if we go somewhere. Jerry loves cold turkey sandwiches and I love figuring out new leftover turkey recipes each year. We had one of Jerry's coworkers over since he's in retail and they and they had to work the Friday following thanksgiving.

Hope yours was great and spent with those important to you. 

Thanksgiving 2013

Jerry & I went to Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. Sadly, Marge just wasn't up to attending. We had talked it up the last couple weeks and her ALF had her dressed up and hair done but when Jerry went to pick her up she had nodded off and refused to go. We're learning you can't get agreement from her if you wake her up. He hung around a while hoping she would change her mind but, instead, we had our first Thanksgiving without her.

What a surprise when we got there. We were expecting cousins Lea and Sonja (with their husbands) but Aunt Mary and Uncle Larry were there too! Mom knew but didn't tell any of us. We had a nice meal and a nice visit. After dinner mom and I went to Michael's which is our Thanksgiving tradition. Every year I ask the Michael's staff how they feel about working Thanksgiving evening and they say they love it because if you work Thanksgiving night you get black Friday off.

Mom's beautiful fireplace and the garland we made for it last year

Me and Jerry

Cousin Lea and Don

Aunt Mary and Uncle Larry

Cousin Sonja and Tommy

The Thanksgiving table

Ratbone Quilt Blocks - 2011

The 2011 Ratbone raffle quilt is a holiday theme piece. I volunteered to make two blocks. I had today off (comp time) so I was able to finish mine, and only 4 days after the deadline! lol Hopefully you can tell that I chose Thanksgivng (Eddie) and Mardi Gras (friend's dog Aka and my previous foster Jakey Boy).

Applique Block for Ratbone

I volunteered to make two of the holiday blocks for the Ratbone raffle quilt. Everyone pretty much makes applique blocks which are NOT my forte. I chose Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras.

If you are wondering what the green blob is at the head of the turkey (assuming you can tell this is a turkey, lol) it is supposed to be garnish. Every blocks is to have some medium green and I thought of something like parsley or kale.

Just as I finished the block and went to cut a thread I accidentally snipped a hole in the fabric! (cue the colorful language response) It's right above the fork. You can probably see my little patch. I need to test it to see if it still shows with fabric behind it (like when it is sandwiched with batting) and if it does I am thinking I will put a piece of "food" on the fork to cover it up. Too bad, the tines of the fork were a lot of work and I hate to cover them up.

One thing is missing from the photo. I have a little knot of fabric that I will tack on the side of Eddie's face so it looks like the bib is tied on him. Looks real cute with it but being a terrible photographer, I don't think of these details when I take photos.

Thanksgiving

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving day with friends and/or family. We had turkey dinner at my mom's condo. It was a quiet day with just me, jerr, my mom, and jerr's mom Marge.
Jerry and Marge at the partially set table (yes, there was more food to come )

Jerry and I after dinner and dessert. We didn' bring a dog with us because Jerry was worn out from working 19 days in a row, most well over 8 hours, and i've been down with a sinus infection which turned to bronchitis. No one was up to walking them.

It's Florida so we had keylime pie (yummy) in addition to the traditional pumpkin pie.

Genocide Feast

Thought I would share from photos from our Thanksgiving get together at my mom's house before talking about "genocide feast".

I got the hard job - whipping the cream for the pie! It was so tiring that my mom did ALL the rest of the cooking ;)

After a brief rest, from whipping the cream, I was able to cream the butter and the brown sugar together to make a topping for the sweet potatoes. Oh, and later I was enlisted to peel potatoes - what an exaughsting day.LOL

My mom had her Christmas decorates in place. Here's Jerry watching football and Eddie watching squirrels.

Then Eddie made his way to my MIL Marge for some pats & scaratches. Daisey was devistated that she was not "the chosen one" this year. We could hear her howling as we got inthe car to leave.

Eddie was so good while we ate. He laid under the table and didn't beg.

Jerry's coworker Joan and her husband Jerry joined us. You can see my mom at the head of the table and Herry's arm at the other end of the table. Let's see, we had turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry-mandarin oragne relish, white beans, corn bread, chessy biscuits, orzo, brocolli, tomato & cucumber salad, a chinese salad (brought by Joan and very tasty), and corn we got from the farms last summer.

Eddie got the scraps from everyone's plate. That made him very happy and being the only dog inthe condo, he ate slowly and savored each bite.

When we got home we fed Daisey & Roxy a little leftovers and before long they were all down for a turkey nap!

Now, the genocide feast. On a rat terrier social networking group that I frequent someone used these words to quote what his son's friends call Thanksgiving. The words stuck with me all night after I read them. I am not so sure why this has impacted me but it has. I read an earlier blog post by a friend who was surprized when her preschooler came home with a constructon paper pilgram hat and her friend a paper indiana headdress. Her comment that she was surprized they still do the pilgrim thing in school probably started me thinking and then the genocide comment just added to it. Oh, and there was the PETA ad I heard on NPR about the cruel conditions inw hich turkeys are raised for food.

To be honest this did take a little shine off my Thanksgiving. I've always looked at the celebration as a celebration of friends, family, and the blessings in our lives whether they be good crops, riches, good health, etc. I've hadn't considered any colateral damage. For me, the images of pilgrims, Native Americans, cornucopias,etc. have been more visual representations (much like Santa is for Christmas) and not so much a part of my celebration. It's nice to have something to think about........ and now I have REALLY confused someone from Australia.

Thanksgiving Day In Photos

Domestic Goddess

Today I was a domestic goddess. Must have been the one day of the year where the sun was aligned with the moon in a 30day month ending in R and the temperature was above the dew point or something like that. LOL

I started by shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Actually, I started by reading the paper and listening to weekend edition on NPR,but that doesn't add to my DG image. But eventually I went shopping for a turkey to cook for Thanksgiving and for eggs to make deviled eggs for a work luncheon on Tuesday. I got a great deal on a turkey too! It was $10 for a 20 pounder. I would like to take the credit for such a smart purchase but actually my mom told me about the best deal plus she gave me a coupon.

Did some laundry in our sorta new, techno washer and dryer. For about the first 6 months I was able to convince Jerry I didn't understand how to use them but now the gig it up. Ugh....

While the washer was washing and the dryer was drying, I played my flute and piccollo accompanied by several famous philharmonic orchestras. You see, I play along with clasical CDs and pretend I am in the woodwind section, LOL.

Decided to cut out a new pattern for doggie jammies. I did get a very good buy on some nice polar fleece and I didn't need my mom to find that for me. $6 a yard and nice quality too. Most of the fleece at JoAnn's had large prints that would be out of scale for my projects but these embroidered cherries were perfect.

Miss Daisey was a reluctant model. She didn't seem to like them either. I believe it was because of the back legs. I struggled getting her in them - hey, it was my first time, LOL.

Then I made a meatloaf for dinner - not my favorite but Jerr loves it and hes been working so hard lately. The light in my oven doesn't work and the kitchen is so bright with windows that I can barely read the digital controls for the oven much less see in there. I had no idea until I look at this photo that my oven needs cleaning. Oops. I might do that tonight.

These last photos are some of my Thanksgiving decorations. I just change up my fall stuff to work for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Thought I would photo them since this time next week I may be putting up a Christmas tree - if I can decide on how I want to do it this year. So many ideas.........