Thanksgiving aftermath

I thought these were cute. Served at one of my niece's dinners

Allie in an antique chair at the house we looked at

Naomi, Maya and Tess

Shanna and Allie

Tess looks angry

Trying for a smile

Trying too hard to smile

We are missing photos of my handsome grandson Daniel and some of the grownups. Too tired to supervise photos more carefully. No photos of all the food I made either. Yeah, I made too much.  Fortunately the weather is co-operating by letting me use the garage as a back-up refrigerator.

I do not vary the menu too much as I get lots of negative feedback when I do. The kids were to bring a dish a piece to cut down on my cooking responsibilities. Naomi actually brought two, ambrosia and candied yams but as I had to clean up after her and supervise the preparations, this was not really time saving for me. Baby steps. Shanna brought pecan pie and Julie brought a salad.

 I did serve Aperol spritzi to the grown-ups (except Steve and Naomi) instead of wine. They matched my orange and blue color scheme. Yep my 1970s house has orange and blue wallpaper, which makes many cringe but I like it. We did get rid of the orange shag carpet, which was everywhere. Fortunately very nice red oak floors were underneath. I have blue plates and blue glassware. Inherited from my pink-loving grandmother is a whole set of pink flowered porcelain plates with pink stemware to match. (also a whole set of ruby glassware) I'm not much of a color expert but these clearly clash.

What I made: Roast turkey with celery, onion dressing. Glazed Brussels sprouts with bacon. Green bean casserole. Crescent rolls which were mainly consumed by the grandkids. Gravy. Supplemented by the kids' contributions. I did not serve cranberry sauce as no one eats it though there were cranberries in the salad. Nor mashed potatoes. If they wanted starch, there were the rolls and sweet potatoes. I had bought butternut squash to make some sort of a curry dish out of it but decided that it would be too much like the sweet potatoes.

The main problem was trying to shoehorn the adults into the tiny space that is our dining room. We try to save some of the patio plants. I took many downstairs leaving a trail of dried up flowers. I will have to do some further rearranging to fit in a Xmas tree though Steve really wants me to skip that (he thinks we could be moving).

I was busy from sun-up to well past sun down (clean-up is even more time consuming) after very little sleep (fretting over decisions to be made soon and now my coughing keeps me awake). After dinner, all I could do is sit back and watch the granddaughters interact (the boys went downstairs to watch cable offerings they don't have). They are so precious.

It is Black Friday now. (a newscaster confused this with Good Friday saying that all the snow left in the East Coast storm should be gone by Good Friday, a safe bet). I have zero interest in joining the crowds. Much of my shopping, for the adults at least, I've done over the year. Steve is out there though. He loves shopping surprisingly. I did take a break yesterday when the turkey was in the oven and before it would need a second basting to run. Snow comes this afternoon so if I want a dry surface to run on, I need to get out there soon. Meanwhile, more clean-up needs to be done.

And things to think about.

Dante pondering in Verona. Is he thinking about the little man up near his shoulder?
Rick Steves says he is pondering why more people visit the Juliet statue than his