Thanksgiving Weekend | A Few of My Favorite Photos

How was everyone’s Turkey Day?

Mine was delicious! I had huge helpings of my Grandma Anderson’s stuffing recipe – a classic that is so good! – along with plenty of mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, turkey and three kinds of pies. Here’s a photo of our beautiful bird, right out of the oven, awaiting its showcase on the vintage turkey tray. (Hey, you knew I had to lead with the turkey, right?)

We spent Thanksgiving day at the farm with my parents, brother, sister, respective spouses and nieces and nephew. As the clock struck Noon, my dad brought out the wine and we waited in anticipation of the meal and laughed at the napkins my mom found. That about sums it up, yes?

My mom, as usual, decorated our Thanksgiving table beautifully. The highlight was clearly my Grandma Ginsburg’s spoon collection that was used as name cards. The spoons have different names of cities in Minnesota – including my hometown, Hector! Check it out:

It was my niece’s very first Thanksgiving!

And she loved hanging out with her cousins and Grandma Marilyn. (We’re missing one cousin in this picture – the oldest, Davis. Here was with us, but somehow missed this photo opportunity.) Clearly, though, Miss Morgan was getting tired of all the photos I was taking of her. 😉

On Friday morning, my mom made breakfast clings (klings?) with lefse, eggs, cheese and turkey breakfast sausage. (You can read about my family’s lefse making tradition here.)

Then, just like that, Thanksgiving was over and we were back home again. How does that happen? As is our usual tradition, we bought our real Christmas tree and decorated it over the weekend. We don’t have a big space, so we never have a huge tree – but that’s just fine with us. The tree is the perfect showcase for all the vintage and new ornaments I have collected over the years. (Can you spot the white turkey near the top of the tree? It’s one of my favorites – a gift from someone I work with.)

Another tradition … Joe and Teacher Man always put together my funky vintage aluminum tree, which I received as a gift from my in-laws. (Each branch has to be individually inserted into the base of the tree, so it’s quite a little project.) I had the boys put all old school 1950s ornaments on it, as well. It’s bright silver and full of fun color!

And one more newer tradition we have stems from Joe’s love of nutcrackers since he was a little boy. In the last couple of years, I’ve decided to buy one new nutcracker for his collection each year. (The new one for 2014 is featured in the photo below.) He’ll take these with him as an adult (eventually), but for now, we display them near the silver aluminum tree.

Friday night, we watched A Christmas Story – you know, the movie with the famous line, “You’ll shoot your eye out!”. Of course, Joe and Teacher Man had to get out Joe’s bb gun the next day and do some target practice in our backyard. (Yes, that’s our grill.) We didn’t lose any eyes, thankfully – and in fact, Joe was pretty pysched about hitting the bullseye. #sharpshooter

Now we’re back to Sunday evening, with a full week of work and school ahead of us. Ack! I’m not sure any of us is ready for Monday, but we don’t have much choice. I’ll leave you with a photo of Earl the pug, which I think perfectly captures how we all feel about right now!