Scenes from Thanksgiving 2008

Here are some photos from Thanksgiving. We had a very short, but wonderful time with family. Only a couple of days were they here. We hope they will visit again soon.

Here is a delicious apple pie with caramel sauce and also an apple galette.

Here is my slave labor. Ha, I kid. Mother and sister in law peeling potatoes for our meal.

Enjoying the feast. Notice that we even used our chaffing dishes and the buffet!

And ending the day with some apple pie and delicious Gevalia coffee that my brother and sister-in-law brought us.

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

My parents, brother, and his wife are coming to visit us for Thanksgiving. They'll leave tomorrow and arrive late tomorrow night and stay until Sunday morning. We're very excited to see all of them. We'll be celebrating Christmas and birthdays at that time too since we won't be going home for Christmas (due to my work schedule).

For Thanksgiving, we have our new chaffing dishes out and ready to go on the buffet. I bought two 10 pound turkeys and Mark will cook them. We drove all over the place trying to find FRESH bay leaves, thyme twigs, sage leaves, and some other stuff. I sure hope it turns out well because the spices alone were more than each turkey cost individually! We had previously decided to outsource our Thanksgiving meal to HoneyBaked Ham, but we had my family make big requests for the delicious turkey Mark cooked last year. So, he's gonna do it again. Our sides we plan to make are green bean casserole, creamed potatoes, carrot souffle, and creamed spinach. Dessert is an AWESOME apple pie that I made last month from Southern Living's November issue. It took a bit of time to make, but was totally worth it. Also, I'm gonna make a sweet potato galette. That will be a first and I hope it turns out well.

We have been quite busy lately with home renovation projects. I keep holding off on pictures because I want a finished product photo of the before and after. We seem to be doing a little dab in each room at the moment so nothing is completely finished. But Mark has made those boxes like the one in the post below above the window, all above the fireplace too. He's not done yet, but it is looking really good. Also, we're painting our cabinets and the island we painted last month. I ordered new hardware and we've put a few pieces on one section of cabinets. We chose an antique white so it's not super gleaming white.

I promise photos soon. If nothing but of the new furniture. At least that is complete.

Living Room Phase I

Before:

After:
We painted the wall a "Sandstone Cliff" and also put up some double lined silk drapes that are supposed to pool on the floor more than they do. But I got them 120 inches long and really should have gone longer. They're a gol and neutral/cream color. Notice above the window there was such a huge blank space, so Mark build some "picture frames" for the wall. We saw them in a lot of French decorating books, so I suppose this is going to end up being a very "French" themed room. We'll put more of the picture frame boxes above the other window and also the fireplace. It's just taking a while to get everything done here! But we really love doing home improvement projects.

Last night we went to one of Mark's firm get togethers. They rented out the Museum of Natural History and we went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. I had no idea what it was and had to google it before we went there. It was quite fascinating to see actual copies of Genesis and Exodus. They said it would take about an hour and a half to go through, but we did it in 35 minutes! They had food afterwards, but we skipped out and went to this really nice French restaurant that one of the other attorneys Mark works with had recommended. We hadn't planned to go there, but when we went in we figured since we didn't have a reservation we wouldn't be seated, but they had one table left for us!! Yay! It was absolutely delish! Mark had a prix fix four course dinner with the best fillet he had EVER eaten. I had a artichoke, pesto, ricotta tart with wild mushrooms and watercress salad. It was sooooo good. Even Mark liked it too. We headed home after that. So full we could hardly sleep.

Friends

Sprinkles and Miss Marble are getting along so much better now. I mean, there's still the occassional hissing and spatting, but overall it's at least an 80% improvement. The one with them asleep was taken last night. Mark missed their bonding moment as he was whisked away at the last minute to Philadelphia just for one night to meet with a potential client. He got back this afternoon on an earlier flight. We went and bought some silk drapes for the living room windows and also bedroom windows. I have to go to Lowe's tomorrow and get the hardware so we can hang them. I'm anxious to get them up. Also, the sofa, dinette, and bar stools that I ordered nearly two months ago should be arriving this week, hopefully.