Thanksgiving 2011

So, I mentioned that Andrew invited a lot of people over for Thanksgiving, right? I can’t say I was too upset… I had also been thinking that we should have a group over for the holiday, I just had been concerned with how long it would take to make everything look decent after our household goods arrived. I think Andrew & I probably just work really well with deadlines! Procrastination happens, but it always gets done in time. 🙂

Once the house was looking like an actual home, I presented Andrew with the next task: decorating. His take on decorating for Thanksgiving? “You can do whatever you want, just don’t spend a bunch of money.” For reals? So I had to think creatively. I’ll admit, I did spend more than I wanted to on candles. But that was because we weren’t allowed to pack any of ours from home. So I had to start from scratch there. And when I was browsing stores for Thanksgiving-y decor, I found that there wasn’t much to pick from. I mean, Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in England, so they jumped from Halloween to Christmas. And the stores on the bases didn’t have much to pick from either.

When I woefully told Andrew that I couldn’t find anything good, he told me we should just go get things from the woods. Brilliant! I started looking online for cute ideas using pinecones and branches. Andrew was a big help too — sometimes I think he is more of a perfectionist than me! He shook his head a lot of my branches & leaves for “better” ones. So I stuck to pinecones. 🙂

I had left the majority of my vases back home to be packed into storage, but I did bring a couple of them with me. They ended up looking really nice on the mantle filled with pinecones and branches.

We rented some tables and chairs from the rec department on base to seat everyone for dinner. Andrew set up the branches on the buffet table — I loved how it looked!

Yes, we opted for paper plates for easier clean-up. Plus I didn’t have enough actual plates for everyone. Andrew & I were really glad our conservatory was big enough for all of this!

Once decorating was taken care of, it was time to focus on food. I really didn’t have much to focus on, since Andrew was cooking the turkey. So I made us a yummy casserole for brunch and a dip in a bread bowl as an appetizer. Andrew made the bread bowl — it was so yummy!

I was really thankful that Andrew wanted to take on the turkey. I have never cooked a whole bird of any species before, and I didn’t think a big ol’ bird (the one Andrew got was 24 pounds!) was going to fit in one of our little British ovens. Well, turns out it barely fit in Andrew’s grill!

Andrew also grilled beets as a side dish. And a sweet potato side dish as well. I handled some of the typical sides: mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade stuffing (that was a lot of bread to cut up…), and a pumpkin pie. We had some of our guests bring other sides, like corn and green bean casserole. We even had someone bring a huge thing of Rice-a-Roni. 🙂 I thought we had a lot of food…

…but there was almost nothing left by the end of it! Young single guys can certainly eat a lot of food!

So overall, everything went really well! Yes, a lot of our guests got lost on the way to our house, but most of them made it! And the turkey took longer than expected, but it was the best turkey I’ve ever eaten! Andrew & I are still surprised that we managed to pull it off as well as we did.