I hope you all had a beautiful Thanksgiving! We hosted ourselves this year, with my sister and her husband coming up to join us! Naturally, I made WAY too much food… which we then ate for days and I haven’t cooked all weekend so that’s been kind of nice 😉 And man, it was good…

I really had fun this year setting a beautiful table. It was basically all DIY and I think it really turned out lovely!

Those are dollar store charger plates spray-painted an aged copper color, (as well as some rocks and little pumpkins) and those napkin rings are toilet paper rolls with twine glued on, topped with this cute little printable on brown paper! The table runner is a roll of wide burlap “ribbon” sewed together three across. Plastic silverware and napkins are good ol’ Walmart and the placemats are from IKEA. I really liked that blue and orange/copper combo! I will say the spray-painted chargers looked awesome, but even after several days of drying they still felt a little tacky and as soon as we lifted the plates off, paint peeled up with them. So… probably a one-time deal only, ha! But they looked awesome!

I spent half the day Wednesday prepping and making pies (cherry and apple… I LOVE a good tarte aux pommes! My sister brought the pumpkin pie, don’t worry, we didn’t skip the classics!) with Adelina and it was really fun to spend so much time with her. She made her own little mini apple tart, and loved playing with the dough and assisting in every way possible. Oh, and cranberry jello! It’s this delicious creamy, mousse-type concoction a friend’s mom makes and we’ve been hooked ever since! Adelina really liked the little rubber molds we used, and licking all the foam off the top, obviously…

Jonas made himself useful by snacking while we worked, and Andrew had the day off so he ran interference and support!

Unfortunately, once she got home from her dance class, Adelina was getting really grumpy, and that night she woke up a mere two hours after bedtime crying — and wouldn’t go back to sleep for two hours. We realized she had an ear infection, poor girl, and she was miserable. I’ve never dealt with this until this week and we were both desperately googling home remedies. We eventually got her back to sleep and in the morning she felt a lot better — although it was still rough: she spent half of Thanksgiving Day asking to go to bed, which if you know her, you know that’s definitely a shock.

A dear friend saved the day by dropping off a little roller of essential oils that really seemed to give her some relief. Even if it was just a placebo, I think having something to give her and apply helped her feel like I was doing something about it, you know what I mean? Either way, by the next night she was good to go.

But all that meant we started Thanksgiving Day totally exhausted, and suddenly Jonas was really grumpy too… yes, he was sick too. No ear infection though, just a nasty cough. Thanksgiving happened anyway though, in between all of the craziness, and both kids were actually napping by the time we sat down for dinner so it was strangely calm. Honestly, I actually really missed them 😦 But this is real life, right?

Adelina cuddled with Papa and watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning.

Then, Sylvia & Kyle arrived early in the afternoon and she was thrilled to see them, as were we! They came bearing gifts from the “big city,” A.K.A. things we can’t buy at our little local grocery store: sparkling apple cider from IKEA (have you tried it? It’s really good! Less sweet than Martinelli’s and seriously perfect) and brie and prosciutto raclette cheese! (yes, we’re nuts, the day after thanksgiving we had another feast: raclette. Mmmmm. The whole house smelled like stinky feet for about a day but it was so worth it, ha!)

We made two little appetizers while she helped me put finishing touches on all the food. These cranberry brie bites were divine. I don’t have a pretty picture but seriously, pin that recipe for later because it’s amazing. I did ours with puff pastry instead of crescent dough though, and we omitted the nuts because my brother-in-law is allergic. Even sans nuts though they’re so tasty! The other one was crackers with ricotta, a little apricot jam and prosciutto.

The Turkey came out perfect and right on time, so I threw literally everything else in next and we got ‘er done! Yup. A Thanksgiving feast cooked all in one oven. Admit it, you’re impressed. Ha!

And then we sat down to eat after Andrew carved the turkey!

We really need something better than a pyrex measuring cup for gravy… ha, someday! I made sweet potatoes this year — we usually feel pretty meh about them but Jonas loves sweet potatoes and I felt brave. I asked around and someone shared a divine concoction that did NOT disappoint. Jonas loved it, and my sister and I finished up the rest ha! No pretty pictures of that one though, sorry. Here’s the recipe though! I asked for help on Facebook and came up with this winner — thanks Andria!

And how about this divine apple tart….

It’s a rustic french recipe that I use, but I like to drizzle on some salted caramel sauce before putting it in the oven. It is soooo good! (And yes, I totally serve it with extra sauce after, too!) Here is the recipe for the salted caramel sauce although be careful when adding the cream after the sugar has caramelized: the recipe says to remove from heat and then add the caramel, but I find that tends to make the whole thing harden and clump. Instead, keep it on heat but just turn it down so that you can slowly incorporate the cream without hardening the caramel. Once the cream is mixed in, you can take it off and add the salt and vanilla.

We did have to take a break of a few hours before attacking the desserts, ha! And you can see in the corner there a little thankful tree I made, but with all the craziness we never ended up putting leaves with things we’re thankful for… such is life, I guess. We did talk about gratitude with Adelina throughout the week though, so that’s something.

Anyway, there’s our Thanksgiving in a nutshell — a little crazy, but still delicious, and I’m grateful for all the family time we got over this long weekend! Now to recover from a three-day lack of sleep and the cold I now have… ha!