Thanksgiving 2011

My insane hand washing from the week before last was not in vain...all of us stayed pink eye free! Thank goodness! I made up for staying at home everyday too; last week, I believe we ran errands every singe day. I wore the girls and myself out. :)

We are definitely in full Christmas mode around here. But before it's completely too late, I want to share a few pictures from our Thanksgiving. The week was consumed with lots of cooking and baking. I spent the Wednesday before Thanksgiving at my grandmothers house learning how to make her cornbread dressing. It's the best ever and I meticulously jotted down notes as we cooked.

We started our festivities at Jeremy's grandmothers house. Jon Jon took the girls outside and they picked satsumas and had a great time on the swing.

EC ate her weight in satsumas from Nan's tree.

Nan got to love on Gracie while the big girls played outside. We celebrated Nan's 85th birthday the weekend of Thanksgiving!

Later that night we went to my parents house for another huge meal. I made homemade yeast rolls and added each one with a surprise. :) The day before Thanksgiving I asked everyone in our family to name a few things they were thankful for. I typed them all up, cut them out and placed one in each roll. As each roll was eaten we shared what was on the paper. I got the recipe and the idea from here.

The only picture I have of the finished product is this one below. You can see the rolls, rolled like crescent rolls in the top left. I didn't do a good job taking pictures that night. After all that baking and eating, I was beat!

I also made this homemade toffee. It was so easy! Hopefully I can get it together and share that recipe soon.

Moms yummy sweet potato soufflé.

Ready to pray and eat!

It was a wonderful day, spent with family. Doesn't get any better than that!

busy bakers

For the past 4 years the night before Thanksgiving has been a major baking night around our house, as I'm sure it is around yours too!  I usually am responsible for bringing 2 sides for our Thanksgiving dinner, but I don't start on those until Thanksgiving morning. The night before we make martha washington's, peanut butter balls, and crunchy pecan pie bites. Most years we make and decorate sugar cookies, also. This year we didn't attempt the sugar cookies, but we did so much baking that we "baked 'til we ached"!!  :) This has become such a fun tradition 'round here. Of course the more friends and family that join us the more fun it is. We crank up the Christmas music and get to bakin'!  My sisters Kim and Steph and my friend and future sis in law, Jessica join me in my kitchen. One year, my very best friend, Amy even joined in on the fun. That was a special year because Amy and her husband are currently living in Tokyo, Japan.

This year Kim wasn't able to join us because, she, along with her husband Justin and sweet baby girl Madelaine, spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Oklahoma with Justin's family. So Stephanie, Jessica and I did all the baking....in our matching aprons.....and we had a blast! We did miss Kim a WHOLE lot though!

Since there were 3 of us and 3 desserts, we each took one.
Steph started on the martha washington's.

her recipe consisted of the following ingredients...

Jess whipped up some yummy peanut butter balls.....

.....using these wonderful ingredients.

I made the crispy pecan pie bites.

Lookin' good ladies! :)

After a few hours of mixing ingredients, roasting pecans, rolling little balls, filling mini fillo shells, and dipping chocolate, we were ready to share our results!

crunchy pecan pie bites

peanut butter balls and martha washington's

These were just a few of the wonderful things we had this Thanksgiving. Oh my. Did we have some wonderful things! But, the time is now 11 pm and I have been going since 4:30 this morning. (Had to get up early for those early bird specials!) So, I am off to bed, but, I'll be back soon with more pictures from our family Thanksgiving dinner. Night y'all!