Our Thanksgiving at home

Thanksgiving decorations..




Bourbon's sign....




I love to cook, so cooking tha Thanksgiving meal is like the superbowl for me. I love the whole process, searching for just the right recipes, getting all the ingredients ready, prepping, cooking, the works. Since we were going to my Aunts house on Thanksgiving, I decided to make our own meal at home on Wed. I can't go without cooking the whole thing. :)

My menu:
Roasted rosemary turkey with herbed ricotta filling
mashed potatoes and gravy
roasted mushroom, pancetta & cornbread stuffing
squash casserole
corn pudding
burgandy mushrooms
sweet potatoes
whole cranberry sauce
rolls from Golden corral (I joke that most people make homemade rolls for special occasions and buy rolls for everyday, when I make homemade bread & rolls all the time just for dinner and get golden corral rolls for special occasions!)
Chocolate Bourbon pecan pie
Gourmet Pumpkin pie


I took the Pioneer Woman's recipe for turkey brine, and it smelled heavenly!! It smelled so darn good I just wanted to drink it....but I resisted the urge. :)




The turkey actually brined for the first 12 hours fully submerged in the stock pot in an ice chest, but then it was time to start the mushrooms and I needed the stock pot, so for the next 4 hours it just had to sit in the brine in a roasting pan, 2 hours on one side, 2 hours flipped onto the other side.

The turkey in the brine.



I had each kid pick out one item that they wanted to cook. The boys pretty much did the whole things by themselves with just supervision from me. They are getting to be quite the little cooks!

Bourbon made a chocolate bourbon pecan pie. Everything tastes better with a little Bourbon in it! :)




Starla making a pumpkin pie. She decided since Bourbons pie had his name in it, her pie was just going to be called Starla pie. :)




Starla's gourmet pumpkin pie (it has a cinnamon struesel topping on it)





I try out a new stuffing recipe every single year because I love the endless possibilities. One year I tried one made with hawaiian bread with sausage and apples....mmmmmm. This year I found 3 recipes that I really liked, so I decided to take what I liked about them and create my own recipe! I used half french bread cubes and half cornbread cubes, pancetta, roasted mushrooms, shredded parmesan cheese and of course celery (and one batch with onions, one without for Alan.:) )




I always make stuffed mushrooms but I found a new mushroom recipe in my Pioneer Woman (LOVE HER!) cookbook that I wanted to try. Burgandy mushrooms, which cook for 9 hours!!!

The mushrooms before cooking....yep that is 2 sticks of butter. My meal in all contained 11 1/2 sticks of butter!! Arteries beware....





the mushrooms after they cooked for 9 hours....



Oh my goodness, they were amazing!


mmmmmm...I made a bacon herbed ricotta cheese mixure and stuffed it under the skin of the turkey before I roasted it...




Roman made the mashed "Ro-taters" :)









Starla was mad that Roman got the turkey leg (the other one had fallen apart) and was having a fit, she refused to be photographed.... :)



Our guests! Somehow Alan & I managed to not get photographed..... (actually our friend Rex was there, who was also not photographed, but he took some pics of us, I will just have to steal some from him!)













Bourbon with his pie...





Our thankful tree. We have been doing this for about 4 years now I guess. The kids go out and find a good branch and we make a thankful tree. Everyone who comes over writes what they are thankful for on a leaf and ties it to the tree. I put the leaves in a scrapbook.





Bourbon is thankful for music....




my daddy is thankful for retirement... :)

Harry Potter night at the omniplex

Yes, I am a bit behind on blogs! Last friday Roman & I (I had tried to talk Bourbon into going when I bought the tickets months ago, but he's much too cool for anything like this and wanted to stay the night with Nanny instead) stayed the night at the omniplex for the release of the new movie; Harry Potter & The deathly Hallows, part 1. The next and final movie os out next July, and I am so sad to see it end. Sigh.

Anyways, we had a blast, there were over 300 people there!! They kept up plenty busy though....


Watching a Harry Potter themed science live show....





playing quidditch....





writing black light secret messages....





forming a deathly hollows pendant out of wire.....





picking a wand....





he made his own horcrux locket....





making his own little snitch satchel....






Making freeze dried ice cream in tiny couldrons....





Roman spent most of his time dueling....





Roman loved the human sized chess set.....



At about 10pm they bused us over to the movie theater. We of course loved the movie.

I staked it out (I was a sooner, I put our stuff in the room before it was officially time, hee hee) and got the nursing room in th eback of the play zone. It is a quiet room, just about completely closed off, where you can turn all the lights and be away from other people. About the most peaceful place you can get.

We got to bed at about 3am after we got back from the movie, and they came around to wake us up at 6:45am. Oy vey, I'm too old for this. :)






Breakfast, he was one super grumpy guy....



I'm not sure we will do it next year. I like the idea of having our own Harry Potter party and then going to the midnight viewing, and then sleeping in our own beds with no one waking us up at the crack of dawn.... :)

Pinkitzel: my new favorite place

There is a new cupcake place in bricktown and I am totally, completely and utterly in love with the place.....



I wanted to write a blog post full of wonderful descriptions of how funky, beautiful, whimsical and nostalgic this store is, and just how giddy I was as I walked into the doors, but sigh, I just can't seem to find the time to sit and do that. So these pics will just have to do. Better that than nothing....






























I am telling you, I am so in love with this place and can't wait to go back!!

Funny Turkey day video

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Falling leaves & Fall program....

Wednesday was leaf cleaning day!
















Thursday was Starla's Fall Program at school....











Starla with her friends, twins Grace & Elizabeth




Wed. while I was cooking dinner, I heard something hit the floor, which sounded to me like my camera. I called out and asked what it was and Starla said "Oh nothing!" but when I set the table a bit later I noticed my camera sitting in her spot, so I knew she had knocked it off the table on accident. But I didn't think too much of it, because actually my camera has been dropped more times than I can count but it never seems to hurt it. The next day when I took my camera to work to take pics, it would no longer focus. Yep, my 3 month old camera is broken. Sigh. If you have a motionless subject and 5 mins you might get it to focus long enough to take a pic, but it is tricky and you can't zoom in hardly at all. I found my warranty info and called the company, because it does have a one year warranty. But they let me know if it looks like customer caused damage, we have to pay for the repair, but I can send it to them and they will fix it. I'm quite certain they will realize it is customer caused damage, lol. So I figure monday I will try to take it to a local photo place and get an estimate on how much it will cost to fix it, and see if I can find a reasonably priced place locally so I don't have to mail it off and wait for it to come back. I can't live without a camera, especially around the holidays!!!! Sigh.

The boys

Bourbon had a choir performance for veteran's day.....












Roman enjoyed playing on the basketball game for 2 games....







Last weekend Roman spent his birthday money getting his ears pierced. He had been wanting to do it for the last couple of years but always chickened out. He was pretty nervous, and Alan had been ribbing him all day about how awful and terrible it was going to be....



The next day at basketball practice the coach told him he couldn't wear earrings during the game, and since he can't take them out for 6 weeks, he had to quit the basketball team! But he says it's no big deal, he doesn't mind.