Thanksgiving

I'd been meaning to write a Thanksgiving blog for quite some now.  Now that I've sat down to write it I realized that I only have a few pictures and they all involve food and not people.  What fun is that? But I can't let my 13 readers down.

R and I hosted my parents and my brother for Thanksgiving this year.  And by hosted my parents only had to bring homemade chicken and noodle (no one makes 'em better than my mom!), green beans and chocolate pie.  R and I had the rest covered.  I loved it.  I made no less that 47 lists, printed all my recipes, only made 2 trips to the grocery store and couldn't wait to get to cooking!

Our Thanksgiving menu pretty much consisted of recipes from The Pioneer Woman.  Have you checked out her blog?  If not, get over there right now...well, after you read this post! R was dying to smoke a turkey and we got a brining recipe from my BFF P-Dub.

 If you learn nothing else from me, learn this.  Brine your turkey people.  It will change your life! The turkey was so juicy and so delicious!  R really outdid himself with the turkey!

We had a buffet of delicious foods including turkey, ham, stuffing, yeast rolls, roasted carrots and I even made gravy for the first time.  Like from scratch, not a package! (patting myself on the back)

I made the most scrumptious apple pie ever.  I died and went to heaven when I ate this pie.  Then I came back to life and realized how much there is to clean up when you host Thanksgiving.  Let's not talk about that though.

My table setting was simple and easy peasy.  Just a couple mason jars wrapped with twine & leaves tied to them.

I got the idea for the mason jars from a blog I read, I wish I could remember what blog it was.  The filler is Epsom Salt.  Who knew Epsom Salt could be an inexpensive filler! I grabbed some batter operated tea lights at Wal-Mart. I even made my napkins have a pocket!  So fancy at the Casa de Morris!

Thanksgiving is a time to remember what we have and what we are thankful for.  Although I'm a little late to express what I'm thankful for, it's better late than never. First and foremost I'm thankful for God's amazing grace and salvation.  He has given me a life that I could never have the words to thank Him for.  I'm thankful for my beautiful, funny, silly, strong-willed little princess.  I'm thankful for my supportive, loving, amazingly awesome daddy to our little girl, husband.  I could not have better parents or friends.  I am thankful for all God's blessings and though at times I lose sight of what those blessing are, they are around me constantly.  How could I forget?

Life has changed with a little one around and holiday's like Thanksgiving take on a whole new meaning.  I'm so glad that I was able to spend such a special day with my family. 

I hope that we all find something to be thankful for everyday!

More adventures to come!

Baking Brownies

For Heaven's Sake!  I blink and all of a sudden it's been a month since I blogged.  Oops!  Time to catch up on what's been going on around our parts.

Avery had a Thanksgiving party at her Children's Day Out program and I was signed up to bring brownies.  Avery and I got to work in the kitchen.

Avery LOVES to help cook.  I try to let her do as much as she can by herself.

We may or may not have had to fish out egg shell.  Don't tell her classmates!

Avery is such a big helper!

Next week I'm going to let her bake a cake unsupervised.  She's old enough.

The hard part was finding the perfect cookie cutter shape.  We didn't want boring, ol' square brownies.  They had to be symbolic of Thanksgiving.  So many choices! Like 100 choices. Seriously.  100 cookie cutters!

 
I had some parameters.  I had to have a certain number of brownies so a lot of the more Thanksgiving type cutters were a little too big.  We went with the heart.  It made the cutest little brownies!

And a few scraps left to, um...share. 

Avery was so proud of herself!  I was so proud of her too.  It was a great way to start the Thanksgiving holiday!

More adventures to come!