Happy Thanksgiving!

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone already. A month of preparation, changing the menu at least four times, coming up with the perfect tablescape...lots of work went into the day but it was all worth it. My work began Wednesday night. My sister came over and we cut up the vegetables and cheese for a little appetizer platter. I made the cranberry sauce, along with the croutons for the stuffing. Plus, I had made the Pumpkin Pie Lasagna  Tuesday night to give me a head start as well. Doing all of this prep work ahead of time saved me the headache on Thanksgiving day. This also allowed me to have a dinner out with the family and meet up with some friends who were in town for the holiday. 

I started my day out early to get a walk in with the dog before all the cooking started. The turkey went into the oven just at 11:00am allowing me to enjoy some brunch with the twins. From here we just continued cooking throughout the afternoon. I had a cheese and crudite platter along with shrimp cocktail ready for when the rest of the family arrived. With a little help from the twins and my mom, I was able to get the rest of the meal cooked and on the buffet just after 5:00pm. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal.
Of course we were all stuffed to the brim. We wanted to wait for Nick to get home from work before we had dessert, so this enabled us all to digest our dinner to make room for our delectable desserts. Overall, it was a nice day. I really enjoyed cooking this meal for my family. It was a lot of work but fun to cook up a bunch of different recipes. Next year I'll be sure to try some new ideas along with keeping some of the old. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well. And perhaps a few of you were able to get some great deals on Black Friday as well! 

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Menu
Oven Roasted Turkey (Ina Garten's recipe)
Mashed Potatoes
Apple, sausage, and pomegranate stuffing
Homestyle stuffing
Roasted root vegetables
Corn
Sauteed green beans with slivered almonds
Cranberry-orange sauce
Crescent Rolls
Pumpkin Pie 
Caramel Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie Lasagna