Planning Ahead Pays Off in the Form of Forest Themed Thanksgiving Dinnerware

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Every year, for the past several years, we've hosted Thanksgiving dinner for Dave's extended family (his parents and aunt and uncle, specifically). And last year, what with our new formal dining room and all, I finally got around to setting a pretty table for the occasion. Well, I thought it was pretty.

My big splurge was the Patch NYC dessert plates from Target. I love them. Then I picked up plain white dinner plates from TJ Maxx and those chargers from, I think, Hobby Lobby.

I'm planning on a very similar table this year....I may switch up the centerpiece some, because I feel like I should, but same plates, same black and white and gold theme.

But one thing that made my table a little less beautiful last year was my lack of coordinating serving dishes. I did have this bowl and platter that my mom picked up for me (again from TJ  Maxx, I believe)

And then I had these salt and pepper shakers from Target:

And when I ordered the plates, I couldn't resist adding in this clearanced serving bowl:

But there's a lot of food floating around at Thanksgiving, so we still had to use some serving dishes that......didn't go! Horrors.

So I've made it my mission to pick up more white serving dishes before this coming Thanksgiving. And I've made great progress. And an interesting trend has developed completely by accident: not only do I have a white/black/gold theme going on, I have a woodland creature/forest theme going on! Which pleases me greatly. Sometimes the universe tells you that you need forest themed fancy dishes by putting them in the thrift stores for you. Message received, universe!

Okay, actually, this first thing is the only thrift find so far:

But do you see what that is?! It's a mushroom sugar and butter dish set! Google has yielded many images of these exact same pieces painted in a startling variety of colors, so I'm gathering this was a popular paint-your-own-pottery set at some point. The ones on Etsy all claim to be from the 70's. Maybe? I don't know. I'm just glad mine is painted white instead of purple and yellow (true story).

Then one day I got a text from my friend Kristi letting me know that Tuesday Morning had octopus pillows on clearance. Of course I got an octopus pillow. But I also spotted these bowls:

Right? So I had to buy those. When one of those owls is wearing a heaping hat of mashed potatoes, I'm going to be very happy indeed.

And, finally, my elusive gravy boat! I've never had a real gravy boat before. We've always improvised, and it's never felt very....grown up. So I've been on the hunt for a white gravy boat all year. I was shocked when exactly what I needed turned up a couple of weeks ago....in the Dollar Spot at Target! It was one of the $3 things, not really a dollar, but that's okay. $3 for a perfectly serviceable and attractive ceramic gravy boat (I felt like I needed to make it clear that's it not plastic. But a plastic gravy boat would be really weird, wouldn't it?) is a good deal in my book:

I'll still be keeping my eye open for more between now and Thanksgiving, but I think we're in pretty decent shape now.

Thanksgiving Part 3, plus a GF muffin recipe

Last year was our first gluten free year, and I didn't really feel ready for doing everything homemade. So I wound up buying pre-made bread (and regular old wheat rolls for our non GF guests). We did make a pie:, as I recall.

But this year I'm ready; I'm going to attempt my very first gluten free dinner rolls! For the most part, we just don't eat a lot of bread around here, and when we do I either use a mix or pick up a loaf at the store. But Thanksgiving calls for homemade rolls, don't you think? A nice thing about Thanksgiving is that a lot of the traditional dishes don't really require much or any modification to make them gluten free. Turkey? no gluten! Mashed potatoes? the same. Cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes are similarly problem free.

So, by my calculations, the things we need to worry about are the rolls, gravy, stuffing, and desserts.

Rolls: I'm going to give these a try:

Art of Gluten Free Baking

(in a perfect world, I would have done a trial run at some point in the past few weeks, but....I didn't)

Gravy: as far as I can tell, the only thing we really need to change here is using corn starch instead of flour for a thickener. Fortunately, I have a lifetime supply of corn starch that I inherited from a friend after, if I recall correctly, a botched or abandoned attempt at homemade play-doh

Stuffing: I still need to figure this out. Most of the recipes I've found seem very elaborate (you know, compared to a box of stovetop stuffing). 

Desserts: I found this recipe for a crustless pumpkin pie:

Ginger Lemon Girl

And, of course, you can't go wrong with Alton Brown's chewy gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe. Oh no you can't. 

Okay, and then, supposing you need to whip up a quick snack/breakfast food to keep your kids out of your way while you're trying to cook all that stuff....how's about a gluten/grain free, (mostly) sugar free cinnamon muffin? Yum! 

I started with this recipe from Taste and Tell blog, and then I, of course, made some modifications. Second time I made them, I doubled the recipe, and that seemed to work better (mostly because of the 5 egg thing), but if you want to halve it, I'd do 3 eggs and maybe add a couple of extra tablespoons of coconut flour.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoon cinnamon
2 cups coconut flour

1 cup tapioca starch

2 cups erythritol

1/2 teaspoon stevia

2 cups milk
1 cup oil
5 eggs
cinnamon sugar – for sprinkling on top (1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon cinnamon)

Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare muffin tins.

Combine dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients. Mix only until moistened. Fill muffin cups and top with cinnamon sugar.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick entered in the center comes out clean

Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top and serve

Thanksgiving: Part 2

AKA The Prettiest Table In the World In My House

I DID buy the Patch dessert plates from Target. Then I waited and waited and waited for like FOUR DAYS for them to get here. And then they did! And it was a magical day.

There was a time, back like...a week and a half ago, when I planned to just rearrange some stuff from my fall/Halloween centerpieces to make a....late fall table for Thanksgiving. And then I even did it:

Wah--it's not NEW enough. And it doesn't go with Patch dessert plates. That was the main thing.

So I ordered my Patch plates and made a few shopping expeditions to various places, and this is what I have now (well, not RIGHT now. I put everything away after I took pictures. I'm a little paranoid about a cat coming along and destroying the most beautiful table I've ever seen personally designed):

In addition to the Patch plates, we have plain white plates from TJ Maxx (I think it was $9.99 for each set of 4; I bought 3 sets), gold chargers from Hobby Lobby ($1.99 each), a white with gold tablecloth from TJ Maxx ($19.99), and black napkins from Target ($9ish for 12).

Glass hurricanes and all the candles are from TJ Maxx. Pine cones from our yard. Brass tray and Christmas ornaments from the thrift store (except the little gold balls, from Target). Owl salt and pepper shakers and the black candlesticks are the only things that wound up getting recycled from the Halloween display. Oh, and black river rocks from Target in that one glass container.

I also have a black and gold runner coming from Amazon....although I might have gone without it had I finished the rest of the table before I ordered it. I still want to get some white serving dishes from the thrift store before Thanksgiving, but I'm not having much luck with that so far.

Also!

I only had eight chairs for the dining room table, and I had ten place settings (nine people for Thanksgiving, but who wants an odd number of place settings? Unacceptable!) We were going to go with the ol' pull a kitchen chair in trick, but after I made my pretty table, I wasn't thrilled with this. But then! At the thrift store just last night! As if by magic! There were TWO windsor chairs hanging out, waiting for me! They do not match, but, then, neither do the chairs I already have (4 of one kind, 4 of another). And they need to be painted black, and it's going to be a tight fit finding time for that between now and Thursday. But one of them was $3.03 and the other was $4.04, so I couldn't very well pass them up. Meant to be.

I also did some tinkering with the buffet. The lamps just weren't working for me anymore. Not because I agree with the masses about the color being all wrong ;), but just because things looked...funny with my globes and the lamps trying to co-exist. And I don't really NEED lamps there, since the chandelier gives plenty of light. So away they went. And we finally got the picture hung up. And I found some globe bookends on the very same chair revealing thrifting expedition. And now we have this:

Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday

Dare to DIY (Entertain) Link Party: Decor and the Dog, Newly Woodwards, Maybe Matilda, Two Twenty One

Thanksgiving: Part 1

The relatives start arriving tomorrow evening, so a lot of what's going on around here is frantic cleaning (clean refrigerator! vacuumed under the couch cushions!)....but there have been interludes for slightly more fun stuff, too (more fun than vacuuming under the couch cushions?! Yes, even more fun than that).

I finally got around to taking down the Halloween-y anatomy flash cards (not that anatomy isn't cool year round) so that I could, just in the nick of time, make a new Thanksgiving set of cards. I'm kind of getting away from the flash card idea and replacing it with more "seasonally themed images on cardstock." I had a thought at one point of doing flashcards of different breeds of turkey, but, well....then I didn't. Maybe I'll do chicken breeds for spring.

Then I thought maybe I'd do a variety of different vintage Thanksgiving images from The Graphics Fairy. But then I decided I wanted some kind of holiday greeting thing in there somewhere, so here, ultimately, is what I wound up with:

There is no angle in this room from which I can get a picture of the whole thing at once. Makes me a little crazy. Anyway.

I started with these free printable "give thanks" letters from At Second Street, and then I added in a few of the vintage images I'd saved from Graphics Fairy: there's a vintage turkey on each end and some oak leaves and acorns in between the two words. I picked up some brown cardstock at Hobby Lobby (I keep talking about Hobby Lobby. I had actually never been there before yesterday. And now I think it's safest for my dwindling supply of money if I stay away. Because OMG: they have everything there! And both the cardstock and the little knob I bought were half off! Of course, the sign by the knobs said, "50% off every day!" ....which I think it's not really a sale anymore if it happens every day. But whatever; it was cheap!).

Oh, I got distracted. Where was I? Yes--brown cardstock. Uhh...then I printed it all out. On the brown cardstock. And look how neatly I cut around the letters! I was kinda proud. I'm like a very advanced kindergartner with my mad cutting skills.

Note: Sad Pilgrims are hanging on the wall now! No more leaning for them. I expect smiles from them any day now. Cheer up--you survived until the harvest! I'm feeling a little loopy tonight. You know where I got the wire to fix the hanger on the back? That's right--Hobby Lobby.

Linking with Dare to DIY (Be Thankful) Link Party: Decor and the Dog, Maybe Matilda, Newly Woodwards, Two Twenty One