Thanksgiving {part 1}

{living}

My, my how November has flown by! I had fully intended to post the first part of this two part blog several weeks ago, but {as I'm sure no one at this point will be surprised by} with everything else going on I never was able to get it done.  I can't really say that I complain about having so full a real life life that I often don't have time to spend a lot of time in the online world, but it would be nice to actually manage to post at least a little more often. HAHA. Maybe one day.
    But for today it is almost Thanksgiving, and I'm finding myself with several days of mostly free time.  I know that sounds like an odd thing to say a few days before a major holiday, but what you have to remember is that my husband and I go to my parents house for actual Thanksgiving, (which means that I only have a couple things to make for the dinner and at least one of those I will be making over there), and my big Thanksgiving rush is actually anywhere from a week to a few days before real Thanksgiving, when we have our annual dinner party - Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner.  Now if you were to look back at posts from last fall I do believe I not only talked about Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner, but promised picutres of my decorations from years past.  Well, if you also look back to last fall you will see that I never did get those posted {oops}, so that is Thanksgiving {part 1} this year.  Now as I mentioned I had intended to post about the tradition and the pictures from past years several weeks ago (well before this year's event) and then post pictures from this year along with some recipes for the second post for Thanksgiving this year.  But, I suppose since we've already had this year's dinner I will go ahead and post about it on this post as well, and tomorrow (or maybe later today) do my second post of Thanksgiving goodies ;)

First, a little background on Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner tradition.  Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner started 9 years ago (which I believe was the second Thanksgiving I was in this house) and at the time both I and my small group of close friends were all unmarried, and all went to our parent's houses for Thanksgiving (actually I'm not even sure we all had our own places yet, we were still pretty young), but we wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving together as a group of friends, and of course we all know how I love to entertain, and so Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner was born.  The first year we did it the evening before Thanksgiving (hence, I believe, the name) and for the first couple years we continued to do it if not the evening before then at least in the same week as Thanksgiving, as the years went on we started varying the dates a bit more to fit everyone's schedule better and it has ranged everywhere from being a full week before "real" Thanksgiving to being the evening before.  Also a couple years  into the tradition I started doing themes for the dinner and decorations, and along with that the dinner really started maturing along with our little group, as we added husbands and kids, and now we've finished our 9th year of dinners and will be having a special 10th anniversary Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner next year (and yes I am already planning it). 
    So there's the background, and now on to the pictures! As I said the first couple years didn't have themes (and we didn't take nearly as many pictures back them either), and I think there's at least one other year that the pictures are on storage on a device somewhere and I'm not sure which one right now, so I'm not posting all 9 years on here, but you'll get the highlights ;)

Thankful For The Little Things

The dinner table, set with a miniature table center decoration and miniature wreaths as favors on the plates

another angle of picture of the dinner table

close up of the miniature table center decorations (mini gourds, mini flower arrangement, and mini faux pears)

The Food (gosh I hadn't realized how much the meal itself has developed over the years, this buffet looks so sparse to me now!) mini (aka cut) sauteed green beans, baby corn, roasted baby potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and Cornish game hens as "mini turkeys"

close up of the Cornish game hen "mini turkeys" I think this was the best part of this theme

mini pies with a mini scoop of ice cream for dessert

Enormously Thankful

giant cornucopia on the buffet table

I made the giant cornucopia from a wreath and grapevine "ribbon", the giant pumpkin and giant corn were purchased, I made the giant grapes and the big leaves and big feather looking things were purchased as well

and with the food on the table (Turkey, sauteed green beans, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffed onions, and corn pudding)

The table, with it's "enormous" centerpiece - giant fake acorns flanked by two giant pinecones

different angle of the table

closer view of the centerpiece

Naturally Thankful

This was the first year I started putting the buffet in the doorway between the living room and the craft room - which worked much better

The dinner table and it's "natural" decorations

burlap placemats (that I made) and pears with letters made with cloves spelling out "Give Thanks" from one side of the table and "Be Thankful" from the other side of the table (I also made the stands they are on by spray painting small glass vases white and gluing them to the bottom of plates

The buffet table and the hanging decorations (another reason I like having the table in the doorway - so I can decorate over it) Looks like we had turkey, corn pudding, cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts, stuffing, and roasted potato leaves

some of the food, but also a little bit better view of the "produce" turkey I made that year

and a close up of the potatoes, I cut them with leaf shaped cookie cutters to go with the theme before roasting them

pecan pie cake for dessert

appetizers

Glowing With Thankfulness

The buffet table and hanging decorations pre food

close up of the table itself so you can see the decorations a bit better

the dinner table setting, I used satin fabric rather than actual tablecloths for both the dinner table and buffet table that year

overhead view of the table

overhead view again

the place settings - the little turkey cross stitches were the favors

close up of one of the little turkey figurines I spray painted with gold leaf spray paint

The kids table

kids table place setting including a little craft for them to do while they were waiting for dinner

appetizers in the kitchen

these decorations were actually covering/hiding some things that were sitting in the windowsill that weren't very fall looking

and with the food and the battery operated tealights in the hanging glittered jars turned on.  We had turkey, Stuffing, Mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, Brussels Sprouts, sauteed green beans, corn pudding, roasted glazed acorn squash with pomegranate seeds, and I think that was all the food, I can't really tell super well in this picture lol

Pumpkin mousse with whipped cream and sprinkled with colored sugar for dessert

new wreaths I made for the front hallway windows

and finally this year:

Traditionally Thankful

{this year the decorations were a little more simple,since the theme was vintage Thanksgiving, and even at that there were a few things I didn't get pictures of, not really sure why I think I was just really tired by that evening because I'd had such busy weeks for several weeks and hadn't been sleeping great for the few days before, and babysat the day of, for whatever reason we were joking a few days later about me failing at my picture taking job.....}

My mantle decorations for this year..... all the decorations were based on a vintage theme (basically mostly inspired by a mid 20th century Thanksgiving - 1940/50/60's) so lots of honeycomb tissue paper decorations, from the research I did honeycomb decorations seemed to be the most common vintage Thanksgiving decorations

the dinner table

the table again, with some honeycomb turkeys and green glass turkey dishes for the table center decorations

these kitschy little molded turkey tealight candles reminded me of molded candles I'd seen when looking at vintage Thanksgiving stuff and were the favors for this year... and looked great in front of standing fan folded napkins at each place setting

Appetizers (and a new kitchen table - I'll be blogging about that later)

a brie volcano! Yum!

The Buffet Table (I know its a weird angle, but I was trying to not have to get the currently super messy craft room in the background of the picture haha) We had some different stuff for food this year, again trying to fit with that more vintage thanksgiving theme.  We had turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, corn pudding, sweet potato casserole , creamed onions, and dinner rolls.  We also had pumpkin pie and pecan pie for dessert, but I didn't get pictures of them.. oops

instead of my normal cranberry sauce i made a cranberry sauce mold this year to fit with the vintage theme

and we even had molded butter (I didn't make this though, I bought it this way)