Holiday Ready

Any excuse to buy flowers.

I had a big Thanksgiving holiday this year.  We invited the friends to come over, and the next thing we knew dinner had swelled to 10 people. I realize that's about par for the course for many families, for ours that's a fairly big crowd.

Grocery list

I made a list, and checked it twice. Most of November was spent counting plates, and thinking about glasses -would it matter if they didn't match? The last time I'd had so many over we'd been outside and used paper plates.

After consulting with several magazine and newspaper sections, plus a variety of online sources I settled on the menu, made up my list and got down to business.

We had turkey, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, scalloped potato, pear-sausage stuffing,  acorn squash and apple pie.  My best guest, Jeanette volunteered to bring appetizers - thank goodness!

My crowd was almost totally non-drinkers.  There was no wine decisions involved. We had cider, seltzer water and juice.  Just because I'm not serving alcohol doesn't mean drinks should be boring.

Husband and I were shopping at Whole Foods and sampled  Jin+Ja. It's gingery with a bit of pepper. Next thing we knew the $7 bottle was in our cart. I thought it perked up our apple cider and the bottle, which isn't empty yet, went quite a long ways.

Turkey 

While I don't love my GE Cafe fridge, I do love my GE Cafe dual-fuel oven.  It came with a probe-thing. You stick the probe into the thing you're roasting and then with a few punches to the control panel (I get the manual out for that part) it cooks until it's the right temperature.  This year I put the turkey into a bag and it was the easiest part of the entire meal.

It's good when producing a big meal to have parts that are easy.

My favorite part was the pie! It's a "slab pie." My group was too big for one pie and this gives you a bigger dish.  I peeled 18 applies. You grind animal crackers up with sugar and coat the crust with that. All the sugar gave the crust a crispy texture.  Oldest son brought ice cream to top off the pie - Yum.

My biggest disappointment was the Brussel sprouts. The recipe looked tasty, but the reality was it they were too salty and too spicy-hot.  It's my own fault - I didn't do a test run.
I like Brussel sprouts, and will give this combination another try, but it may be back to bacon with Brussel sprouts for me.

Our house is traditional with a separate dining room. The furniture came from my Mother-In-Law. My husband and I haven't ever been much on furniture buying. Until her furniture came our way we had a rectangular table and no buffet.  We have a big screened porch in the back and that's where most of our party entertaining happens - during the summer.

We weren't going to get 10 people around that table in this room so we moved to the living room.

Looking into the living room we had the old rectangular table and the round table. It wasn't a perfect arrangement but I was pleased how it worked out. We had both young and old in the same room and there was room to move around.

The room has more natural light and while multiple tables may look less homey I like multiple conversation opportunities.

I like the white pumpkin with the blue tableware.

The light to the right needs improvement!

This isn't the first time we've moved the table to the living room, events at our house seem to be trending larger.

For the future I'm thinking about looking for smaller folding tables and setting up three tables in the room. It will keep larger groups in the same room but make the space more approachable.

It was a long day but worth all the fuss!




Here I am, in my holiday outfit cobbled together from my closet. I bought the pants last summer at Coldwater Creek, they're blue and black patterned. I like the cut through the legs, which is loose.

The shoes came from Zara, I got them to wear to Vermont in September.  They turned out to be terrible shoes to walk in, but they're fine for standing around at a party. The sweater is a light wool from The Gap. Our house is chilly so I need a light wooly layer.

Everything but the sweater can go in the washer.  Looking at the spots on the shoes I have to remember to give those a a swipe too.

When I made it upstairs to go to bed I discovered I'd worn the shirt inside out all evening.  Nobody mentioned it so I guess it didn't make a difference.

I used the silver that I got from my Aunt Nancy.
I'm holding in for one of my sons, mother-in-law's silver is reserved for the other son - should they start families.

This set has 12 place settings so I pulled it out of the box it's been in for the past several years.

I'm not sure what a great idea that was, as one of the coffee stirring spoons found it's way into the garbage disposal and suffered some damage.  Opps!

Aunt Nancy, second right, next to my very pastel looking mother. 

 Sorry Aunt Nancy - I'll be more careful next time.

What do you do when faced with a big crowd?