What a Fabulous Holiday

Well, we ate, drank, and were very merry.  How about you?  We had two of my girlfriends over for  Thanksgiving and a few of our other friends popped in throughout the night.  Blake was our token man.  I think he was feeling the estrogen in the room.  Give four women a few glasses of wine and we all become chatty Cathy.  One of the things I love about women is we can start and stop and go back to previous conversations.  I think Blake tuned out after the first round.  LOL!  I should note that when you get to the dinner pictures, we were all so hungry that I started to take pictures for the blog and then was like forget it.  I didn’t have time to stage it, place it nicely on the table, etc. I just snapped a few but they are totally cheesy.   Oh, well!  What can I say?  We had a blast. Hope you enjoyed your time with family and friends.  Did anyone get their tree this weekend?  I will get ours this week.  Can’t wait for the smell of pine in the house, lighting a fire in the fireplace (In LA it’s called Duraflame) for a little snap, crackle, pop. 

Here’s a peak at our Thanksgiving.  I ended up adding wicker chairs to the end of the table since we were having a few extra friends over.  I also added our Riedel Chardonnay and Cabernet glasses to the table for each course.  The table looks a little different.

    I loved this picture taken below in the mirror opposite the table.

The table as the sun was setting with with the wicker chairs added.

My girlfriend Lisa dropped by, while I was prepping for our guests.  She brought homemade Bloody Mary’s.  I thought what a fun gift to do.  She had it all wrapped up including the fixings, all I had to do was pour into glasses.  I just happened to buy two large mason jars and thought what a fabulous hostess gift this would make, especially for a brunch.  You could prepare fresh Bloody Mary’s (like she did) and put in a quart sized mason jar and tie it with raffia.  In a small size jar you could put celery, onions, green tomatoes, or whatever is your favorite sides (you could put a tiny jar of horseradish and Tabasco).  Wouldn’t that make a great hostess gift?

 

APPETIZERS

Artisan Cheeses

Fig and Olive Oil Raincrisp Crackers

Cured Meats

Gourmet Olives, Artichokes, Peppers

Veuve Clicquot Champagne 2007   It was a little chilly on Thanksgiving but, we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine sipping champagne and eating our appetizers.  Nick Below.

SECOND COURSE

Butter Lettuce with Grape Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions, and Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing

Gary Farrell Chardonnay 2007

MAIN COURSE

Organic Turkey

Green Beans with Shallots,  Slivered Almonds and sprinkled with Dried Cranberries

Baby Carrots with Dried Sherry & Italian Parsley

Mashed Potatoes with Chives

Biscuits

Chateau Montelena Cabernet 1995

Nickel & Nickel Cabernet 1997

We had the most beautiful turkey and of course the boyfriend starts cutting it before I could stage it for photos.  Life of a blogger learning in progress.  Doesn’t he know I have to photo everything?  He’s learning.  But unfortunately the sliced turkey was not photogenic.  HA! HA!  My friend Maureen made the mashed potatoes.  Can you believe I don’t know how to make mashed potatoes?  I normally do roasted potatoes but living in a small house, we don’t have a double oven.  Note to self, when you have a “grown up house”, make sure you install a double oven!

Ok you can see my photo skills are going down hill!

 

DESSERT

Homemade Apple Crisp

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Here’s some photo’s throughout the evening. Here’s Nick doing her wine tasting.

 

Kirsten, Maureen and Nick.

Me and Kirsten who’s adorable and we love her.  My neighbors girlfriend.

Maureen and Nick.

Our token man, Blake.  What a trooper.

Maureen had to run home for something and changed because it was cold out.  When she came back, we joked that she looked like a construction worker with the black and yellow (or a bumble bee) hence, the reason for hand signals.

Getting Silly.  Kirsten and Maureen

Hail, Hail, Hail the gangs all here! OOPS!  Except our token male who is taking our picture. 

L to R:  Me, Kirsten, Maureen, & Nick.

We had a beautiful day!  I hope you all did as well.

Now time to prep for Christmas!  Ready, Set, DECORATE.