Christmas Decorations are Up!!

We spent all day Saturday and most of the morning Sunday putting up Christmas decorations on the house. Scott says that he will never do it again. He was really scared when he got up on top of the house so he moved around to the front and climbed up and down the ladder for over 4 1/2 hours. I want to get some more snowflake lights but other than that, I think it looks pretty good for our first time.

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving started early for me as my mom and I got up around 5 to start all of the cooking. The turkey had to be rubbed and popped in. I wanted to start the roast. We made the pasta salad and deviled eggs early and then had a break for a bit to straighten up the house.

I was really excited about the Macy's Day Parade coming on this year because I thought Kanin would think it was really cool to see all of the big balloons and bands.

Since the cooking was well underway, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of my babies.

The family all showed up around noon. Mom, Dad, Debbie, David, Alissa, Kurt, Sarah, Ben, Marissa, Alison & Aidan were all over for a feast and I mean FEAST! Jeff, Dayna and Kelsey showed up later for some dessert.

After a long day of family, football and feasting, we ended the night with a new family tradition of reading Elf On the Shelf. our elf's name is Chuckie and he shows up on Thanksgiving night.

Trials of a Thanksgiving Turkey and Stuffing, Part II

Well, I completely changed my plan on the turkey. I had it out in the garage in the freezer and I moved it down to the refrigerator part on Monday morning to thaw out. Well, Tuesday night I said something to Scott about the turkey and he said that it was still frozen. I was freaking out so I brought inside to the refrigerator, put it out on the counter for a few hours in a pand, put it back in the fridge and finally, put it in a cold bath. It finally unthawed but I didn't not get to do the Alton Brown's brine as I did last year.

So, I thought since I skipped his step, I would just combine Bobby Flay and Paula Deen's recipes and just kind of came up with my own. I put all of Bobby's herbs into a butter, lathered up my bird and put it breast side down on 400 degrees for 30 minutes and then I turned it down to 325 for the rest of the time. The skin came out crispy on the bottom half. I popped it in the oven right around 7am and by 10am the little thermometer said the turkey was done--we had another 2 hours to go!! So, my mom and I flipped the bird over and let the breast sit down in all of the juices and turned the temp down to 275 for the next 2 hours. I have to admit that that turkey was some of the most juciest and tenderest turkeys I ever had. The meat, literally, was falling off the bone. When we tried to move the turkey from the roasting pan to the platter, the 2 leg bones just pulled apart from the body.

Finally, after Scott and Debbie carved the turkey, I poured Paula Deen's cranberry glaze over it. It was really, really good.

More on the rest of Thanksgiving in another post.

Well, they are called "stockings", right?

Gracie is having a great time with these new "socks" she found.

Blog Questions

For those of you that have been doing this a bit, could you help me out?

I don't like how my paragraphs are so far apart from each other. Can I change that?

How do you put a picture up in the topic?

How do you change the size of pictures?

Sprouting Up Trees

Well, it is that time of year again. My favorite time . . . putting up Christmas decorations. Everyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with Christmas trees. I love all Christmas tree: big ones, little ones, red, blue, black , white (you get the picture). I used to have a Christmas tree for every room but now that we bought the bigger house I am going to have to buy more trees.

Each of my trees have a certain theme. The one in the family room is gold, silver and white with angels all over it. I call it my angel tree. A lot of the ornaments are from Scott's mom so I thought it fitting that her ornaments should be on the angel tree. My obsession with trees is obvious if you take a close look at this one. Although it is a beautiful tree, it is too tall for my house so the top branches have never been on it! It is kind of just cut off at the top. I couldn't resist buying it, though, because it was normally $250 and I snagged it for a cool $28 after Christmas. Every year I say that I need to buy an angel for the top of the tree and then I forget.

I also have a red and white candy tree. I put red lights on this one and all of the ornaments are candy related.

There is the small tree with pink lights and victorian ornaments such as shoes, flowing dresses and intimate beads. I have a Scooby Doo tree and a sports tree, too.

In a couple of years I would like to do an old-fashioned Christmas tree where we string popcorn and find pone cones to paint. I think with that tree I will add all of the kids' homemade ornaments that I'm sure will surface over the next few years.

I put the family room tree up this past Friday and I've attached a couple of pics. I will add pictures of the others as they slowly find their way around the house.

A night at HOME

Last night the Westerhold side of the family went out to dinner at Kitaro. Then, with the help of my fabulous babysitters, I was able to go out with Paul, Susie, Doug, Scott, John, Sherri, Rich and our neighbors, Corey and Anne. My friend, Jen, was able to meet up with us later in the night.

We first went to the Electric Cowboy which will probably be the only time I go there but it was fun line dancing, again. Then, we headed to HOME at the Ameristar. One of our friends, Becky, works there and was able to get us VIP seating. I actually had a lot of fun plus DJ Jazzy Jeff from DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Will Smith) was the guest DJ. It was really cool.