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Saturday, December 4, 2010

Company's coming

I have been so busy, my blog has skipped over Thanksgiving and went right into Christmas. But don't be fooled into thinking that i didn't decorate for the Thanksgiving holiday. O contrare ( I know i misspelled that). I hosted Thanksgiving this year so i had been so busy with preparing for that. Here is a quick glimpse of what i passed over in blogging.



Now I did however only decorate the dining room in Thanksgiving ( The rest of the house was ready for Christmas). I need to start collecting more Thanksgiving decor for the rest of my house. Here is my dining table that i was so proud of.



Each napkin had a place card attached, so everyone knew where to sit. I strategically placed everyone. Not because i wanted to over organize, but because i can only fit so many people around my table and since 12 people were coming for dinner (not including the children)  i wanted to make sure everyone would be comfortable.
The dinner turned out to be so nice. Special thanks to my mom who had been camping out at my house the week before in order to help me with the preparing of my house for company. Also to help in the kitchen. And everything went so well. Now that she is gone back to her house i miss her being here. :( Thank goodness she only lives 15 min away.

The turkey was amazing. A few weeks before Thanksgiving, my mom, my sister and I were watching the food network simultaneously when we saw the show "Cooking for Real" with Sunny Anderson. She made "Daddy's game changing Turkey" which was a turkey that had been brined a few days before roasting. The turkey looked so juicy that i had to try it. So we did and it was the best turkey that i have ever roasted. Don't get me wrong we have had turkey every way imaginable and those were wonderful in their own way. We've  had deep fried turkey..mmmm a southern favorite. We have had turducken...yum. If you have never had turducken you have to try it. It is delicious. But since mom, sis and I are back on the wagon and attending weight watchers we thought that perhaps we could do without the fattier duck and boudain ( a tear is falling down my cheek). But when we saw that turkey that Sunny made we knew we had to try it and all of my family are indeed fans of brined turkey now. Here is a link to the recipe.

Daddies game changing turkey

and here is my turkey.

My grandmother asked how I got it to look so perfectly roasted . I told her that the recipe called for a rub that you put on the turkey which was delicious, but it also added to the beautiful color.

One of the things that has always happened to me is that i would buy all of these things for a perfect dinner but forget to cook them or remember at the last minute that i never baked the rolls. So that wouldn't happen this year, the night before Thanksgiving my mom and I sat down and made a list of all the things that we needed to have done for the dinner and i made a timeline so that the oven time was organized and that everything went in that needed to be cooked and we didn't forget anything.

Needless to say the morning went off stress free. Is was fabulous. We had time to get ready for dinner because we weren't stressing of things we might have forgotten. Another thing that helped was that everyone that came to dinner brought a dish so I wasn't making everything. Jennifer (sis) brought stuffing and her yummy desserts, My sister-in-law Ellen brought her delicious Mac-n-cheese. Her mom Marianne brought fabulous green beans. My brother GJ made the corn meal dressing whose recipe has been handed down from my Abuelita who passed away a long time ago to my dad, to my brother who now makes it every year.

Lastly, I think the most fun i had was decorating the kids table. After years of watching Martha Stewart shows, I knew that when I decided that i would host Thanksgiving I would have to have a kids table. So months ago,  i scoured over Craigslist to find a small table that i could decorate for the youngins. I found it. I found one that had been painted with a leopard pattern. Unfortunately i didn't take before pics of it but i did decide to paint it green.
Ta Da, here is the adorable final product. It makes me smile.


Each place setting had a turkey coloring book  w/ a bundle of crayons. The idea came from Martha herself after watching her Thanksgiving special. I got the turkey pattern from her website. childrens table

My sister and i also made turkey hand puppets. See the napkins around the plastic utensils. What you don't see are the yellow sippy cups i bought for a dollar each at my grocery store. With a brown sharpie i wrote each childs name on it so they wouldn't get them confused

 


Everything turned out fantastic and i hope my guests had as much fun as I had planning it.
I think they did.





1 comment:

  1. Everything looked so beautiful.It was a great Thanksgiving.

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