All about the Turkey!

We had a very nice T-day with family and a few friends. It's always a lot of work to host, but I do enjoy it. Also enjoy when it's over. There are always things I'd like to improve on for setting up to host. Seems everyone is always stuck in the kitchen with little room to move around. Unfortunately, our big table takes up all the room. I didn't set the table this time, but it felt bare. Thinking we'd play some games before, but that didn't happen. Guess I'll just set the table for Christmas this year. I might leave the plates in one spot, but? I do like a set table as it felt unfinished when I just had everyone grab forks, knives etc. It was a lot less clearing and work to set up. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

 I will have more photos to post after the Holiday. 

I wanted to make some pie and cake this year for T-day. Usually just work, cleaning our house and prepping for T-day is enough, but I wanted to actually make something too! 

It's not done yet, but this is a Cranberry tart. Same as a key lime tart, only I used cranberries. Love the color as all the T-day pies are usually a variety of brown on the plate. This should brighten it up and give us a new flavor other than spice. It would be a nice Christmas pie too. I'll decorate it with whipping cream and cranberries for the top. It also has a lemon cookie crust. 

My turkey cake. I copied one from Pinterest. Not exactly twinning, but good enough! Everyone said he looks kind of special. lol.. It's a strawberry cake, with homemade strawberry filling, with whipped cream added in white chocolate pudding and flavored some with coco and the other food coloring /plain. So its lighter then butter cream., but the pudding adds stability to the whipping cream. The only thing I didn't make from scratch was the cake, it was a mix. I know strawberry isn't t-day flavors but again wanted some other flavor besides spice! 

The kids made a few pies too. Celina did a turtle pecan pie and I think Logan's was a traditional pecan. Celina also made a sweet potato pie and then Logan also made some homemade rolls. 

Steve is cooking a turkey and ham. We will have mashed potatoes, brussle sprouts, sweet potatoes, carrots, and stuffing. I'm assuming we will have a cheese platter for before dinner? I should make some crackers!! 

All I need to do today is clean up the kitchen, set the table, bring up the extra table, vacuum the floor and take a shower/get ready. 

Happy Thanksgiving!! 

Happy 29th Birthday Don!!

 We celebrated Don's 29th Birthday last night with a Prime rib dinner. 

Had Steve's parents over and 2 of Don's friends joined us for the meal. 

The dinner was excellent. Celina cooked everything perfectly with some help from Steve. 

 

So mulch !

 We spent 4 hours finishing up all the mulch for the back yard. It looks good! We had enough mulch to do all behind the apple trees, and the entire burm with a thick 3" on all! It was a mixture of pine needles and branches along with mulch, but it looks good! The best part, it was free, from Chipdrop.com.  Even though it took us a total of 6.5hours. Our back yard looks good. Just need to freshen up the other mulch along the back rock wall and under the deck. Maybe we'll just go with the lighter sliver mulch next spring. Doubt we will need another huge drop of mulch again. 

The drop!!!

Finished!! I started with the apple trees since there was just dirt and zero grass growing back there. Then we had more mulch so started on the burm. It's a huge area that we covered in mulch because we went behind the burm too. Thankfully, we had just enough to cover all the area's we wanted and then some! 

It was mixed with some pine needles and sticks, but it was free. Oh and they snuck in 3 logs too. We will just burn those up in the fire. Speaking of fires. We actually had a back yard fire last night. It was 42 degrees, no wind and I wanted to burn up the leaves and branches that were in there. We did have a tough time getting the fire started and it never did burn up all that was in our fire pit. I think we lasted an hour out there. 

After doing mulch from 10 to 2:30pm, we treated ourselves to Nico's in Uptown. They decorate the entire house/restaurant in Christmas. Something like I want to do in our house this year, just one area/room. 

Turned out super cute. They had a Grinch room. 

We went for happy hour and shared chips, salsa and nacho's. We were starving and the food was sooo good! 

The room we sat in with the jingle bar. So cute!!! We got there before it started getting super crowded and left to go have wings and fries at another place. 

I want to try making these marshmallow fluff snowmen on drink glasses! I looked up a recipe to make my own fluff. I'l have to try it this week before T-day. I think turkeys would look cute too and just color the fluff to make the feathers! 

Madelyn is 5!!

 Happy 5th Birthday  Madelyn!! 

We stopped over Friday night to give Madelyn her birthday gifts and some cute cat cupcakes. Cats are her favorite thing right now! 

She picked the orange cat cupcake! I love how they made different colored cats. 

We got her all cat theme items, cat slippers, headband with cat ears, shirts and pants with cats a moving stuffed little cat, socks and underwear along with a Hello kitty bowl and chopsticks and some puma slides. I wanted to give her gifts before the kid party today. I figured she would over look all since she will have so many to open tomorrow. I also wanted to get her some special cat themed cupcakes. Super cute and were made by Hyvee. 

Sip wine and paint

A fun night of wine and painting!! Don set us up to paint at the Cannon Falls Winery since he knows the owner from the gym. We were lucky to get into this full event! 

We all did great! So many variations of the same painting, but all turned out! 

It was fun to see how everyone did something a little different. 

It started out looking sketchy and turned into the above!!

GroomIng

 Zoey's fur grows fast! Didn't I just groom her? She is good for the most part, but she does not like her paws touched. It's always a just do it as best as I can, but it's never perfect. I'll need to pay someone to trim her nails. I can hear them clicking on the floor which means they are too long. She does look good when she is trimmed short! It's her bath time today! She will just air dry since her fur is so short. 

Before 

                                                                     After, all beauty!!

Kendra's birthday brunch. I forgot to take photos during the party! My bad!!

I also forgot to serve her pumpkin cheesecake! 

And I forgot the cheese in the quiche!! lol. It was one of my better quiches too. Goes to show you, forget the cheese and it turns out even better!! 

I'll make this again!!