"Home" for the holidays!

We tend to do our holidays a little different than some people, it’s hard to celebrate when you are so far from the ones you love. But we have been blessed with great friends who are willing to spend time with us and I wouldn’t change our “traditions” for the world. Here’s what we did this holiday season.

Thanksgiving

When it comes to Thanksgiving ours isn’t the traditional kind. We live thousands of miles away from our family so we can’t just hop in the car to spend the day with them. For us it’s been six years since we spent the holidays with our family and we miss them a lot around this time of the year, so each year we try to do something special to make the holidays memorable. In the past we have went to the movies, went on mini vacations, hosted for friends, went to other people’s houses, and boycotted tradition with tacos.

This year, Thanksgiving 2017, we hosted Thanksgiving again! We were excited and blessed to be able to do this for people who are like family to us. This was only my third time making a Thanksgiving dinner, 2^nd time hosting, and I feel like I have the whole thing down to a science. When we host like this I try to make it epic! I want the food to be homemade and everything a person could possibly want for Thanksgiving is on the table. Here’s what I do to prepare for our feast.

I start at the beginning of October (crazy I know!). At that point I start planning the menu and making an insanely detailed grocery list. Once I have that all nailed down I’ll go ahead and start shopping for the nonperishable items, the stuff with a long shelf life, like sugar, turkey pans, pie pans, plastic plates and utensils, and seasonings. By the end of the month I’ll have my husband ask around at work and start inviting people. When he’s able to give me a loose headcount I start shopping for my turkey and buying items that I know will be okay in the freezer, like butter, cream cheese, shredded cheese, and pie crust. By the time the great turkey month rolls around I am pretty close to done with my shopping. I did have to go in last minute for some items I wanted to add and of course for the rolls (the one thing I don’t make).

The cooking process for all this food is just as complicated. I usually start prepping about a week in advance. I’ll double check to make sure that we’ve bought everything that we need, and make sure the turkey is in the fridge thawing. Then the day before Thanksgiving I work on some of the baking. This year I did 3 pies, 2 dozen cookies, and 2 dozen deviled eggs all the day before. We’ll also go ahead and prep some of the other food so that it will just need tossed in the oven for a bit before eating, we try to keep the oven totally available for the turkey.

Here was our Thanksgiving:

Appetizers: Crackers, Cheese, and Summer Sausage.

Main Meal: Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Green Bean Casserole, Company Potatoes, Baked Mac n Cheese, Rolls, Candied Yams, and Deviled Eggs.

Dessert: Pecan Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, and Oatmeal Cranberry White Chip Cookies

Christmas

Christmas was a little impromptu for us. We weren’t sure that we were going to have people over, but Thanksgiving went so well that we couldn’t resist a chance at round two. There wasn’t as much planning put into Christmas since there wasn’t much time in between the two holidays but I think we pulled it off nicely.

The menu was simple. We decided on lasagna and salad for our main dish. There was no reason behind that choice other than I wasn’t feeling the traditional foods and lasagna sounded good at the time. Dessert worked out the same way. I picked a peanut butter pie because I had never made one before and chocolate sounded good and a red velvet cake for those who didn’t want the crazy rich pie. We also did some sugar cookies and fudge.

The hubster and I did an intimate Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. That was when we decided to open our gifts from family and each other. We had crackers, summer sausage, and cheese while watching A Christmas Story. We knew that Christmas Day would be hectic, what with me trying to make a lasagna from scratch for the first time ever, so we wanted to take a moment the night before to just relax.

The day of we had friends come over. We played some holiday games, like the white elephant gift exchange and the saran wrap ball game, as well as games like Cards Against Humanity and Trivial Pursuit. We ate lasagna and had a blast! We didn’t focus so much on the food, like you do during Thanksgiving, but rather we focused on spending time together and having fun.

We spent the rest of our Christmas vacation (my time between classes and the hubby’s time off of work) relaxing, cleaning, and celebrating. We went to the Santa Claus house in North Pole, Alaska and we went to the Ice Park next door. We also won the Christmas decorating contest for our neighborhood and it took us DAYS to get all the decorations taken down. But it was all worth it! Unfortunately, we both ended our time off with the flu.

 Thank you to all that joined us and I wish everyone a good year in 2018!