Thankful that thanksgiving is OVER!

Now, before I come off as ungrateful and mean, I do LOVE Thanksgiving and cooking and having loads of people here and lots of good holiday cheer! I don't hate Thanksgiving at all! I really love it. All told, I think it's probably my most favorite holiday! The reason I'm so glad it's over is because I was EXHAUSTED by the end of it all! I started preparation on Monday - did all the shopping, bought the flowers, and started the cleaning process and it wasn't over until yesterday when I almost finished all the cleanup. I still have a tiny bit to do in the dining room, but it's 99% done! Yaay!

See, our house is ridiculously large and all the rooms sort of ramble on into each other, so the dust is a problem. It's an old old old house and we have two, VERY sheddy dogs AND a pellet stove. All of these things contribute to massive dustiness. In fact, I dusted the entire downstairs on Wednesday, and by Thursday afternoon, you could already start to see a bit of dust accumulating in the living room where the pellet stove lives. The pellets are highly compressed sawdust bits, so as you empty the bag of pellets into the hopper, little dusty particles go floating about. There's really nothing you can do about it except dust. A lot!

So, anywho, I shopped for all the food, I dusted, I vacuumed, I washed, I scrubbed, I decorated with gourds and grapevines, I made flower arrangements, I set the table with pretty dishes and wine glasses and cloth napkins...And then the cooking for 20 humans. My husband's mother and I cooked for about 5 hours on Wednesday and then started in again at about 10am on Thursday. Finished cooking at 4:30pm on Thursday and then gobbled up everything! At about 7pm we started dessert time and then our last guests left at about 9:30pm.

POOPED does not describe how my body felt that night and ALL DAY yesterday. Utter exhaustion!

I managed to remember to take a few pictures! Yaay for me!

Here is the central flower arrangement for the table:
I used alstromeria, dried oregano (the maroonish flowers), two types of dried flat-leaf eucalyptus, curly willow and grapevines. I think it's purdy!

For appetizer, we had an array of beautiful hummus, tabouleh, olives, baked pita chips, and shrimp cocktail all provided by one of our most amazing guests!! I also made my world famous baked, stuffed mushrooms:
I made 40 of these little suckers!!

We made traditional homemade stuffing:
This has three types of bread, a huge amount of butter, fresh thyme, sage and rosemary, sauteed celery, onion and mushroom, and is seasoned with wine, broth, salt and pepper. It's REALLY good, if I do say so myself!

Roasted veggies:
A lovely mixture of celery, carrot, onion, mushrooms, beets, asparagus, green beans, baby brussel sprouts and leeks. They are all seasoned with butter (of course!), olive oil, fresh herbs, salt and pepper.

Mashed potatoes:
With butter, cream, roasted garlic and carmelized onion. They are ridiculously tasty!

Butternut squash:


Gorgeous free-range, organic roasted turkey:
We were just taking off the cheese cloth to finish browning it.

And dog:
Hee hee hee!! Just kiddin'!! This is a cute one of Koty, though, isn't it? He's licking his chops in anticipation of his yearly turkey dinner!

I also made two pumpkin pies - here's what's left:


And my MIL made her famous Swedish apple pie that is TO. DIE. FOR!

Other desserts included a beautiful wedding cake that I ordered from our local bakery and I STUPIDLY forgot to take a picture...GRRRRR. It was GORGEOUS. Two layers, decorated with tiny dots and flowers; top layer golden cake, bottom layer chocolate cake, all frosted with pretty buttercream - even the writing congratulating our friends who JUST got married three weeks ago was in buttercream. It was subtle and VERY pretty. And I FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF IT. Grrrrr.

Anyway, we also had pecan pie, ice creams, cheesecake, cookies and fruit salad. In other words, we were wanting for NOTHING!! I didn't even eat breakfast yesterday, that's how fooded out I felt!!

Hope you all had a fabulous day with good friends and good food and good holiday cheer, as well...

I'm off to watch football. Important things to do this weekend!! : )