So one of the most exciting things about moving to our new house was that we officially got tapped to host our first Thanksgiving dinner! It was also going to be our first combined family Thanksgiving with Joey’s family as well as mine!
My family typically always does a big Thanksgiving with my mom’s side of the family, so of course all of them and more were in attendance, as well as Joey’s parents, brother and his cousin came up from the Tampa/St Pete area. In total, I believe we had 17 guests! Pretty intimidating for a first Thanksgiving….but we were so blessed in that both of our parents handled the meat portions,  so we had a baked turkey, fried turkey and a honeybaked ham, and I didn’t have to stress out about ruining the biggest part of the meal (or get up at 4am to start cooking-thanks again for that mom!) And everyone else brought a side dish, so I didn’t have to cook too much at all as a matter of fact, it was terrific!But I did have to figure out how to serve 17 people….lol. We decided that instead of trying to cram two big tables in the dining room along with the rest of the furniture in there, that we would clean up and utilize the craft room since it’s so open with the dining room. And amazingly, it worked out just fine. I had almost everything I needed. Except silverware. We only had service for 12 and Crate and Barrel had our style on backorder until after Christmas, that was a slight panic…but it turned out that Walmart had an identical set, lighter weight of course, but otherwise identical, so I was able to make up the difference for cheap.

Dining Room

Also, I ran out a couple of days before and bought another gravy boat since we were having tables in two rooms. Funny story about the gravy boat, a girlfriend of mine teased me for years over my belief of the importance of gravy boats, and she, of course, was the one who bought me the gravy boat that I registered for on our wedding registry…she told me we’d never use it…And yet, I went out and bought a second for Thanksgiving, and honestly if we do it again next year I’ll probably need a third (one for each table). Although as a shout out Christi (if you ever read this post), I will give you credit that I only use them once a year…and they’re awful to try to store. 🙂 hehe.

Tablescape using burlap and milk glass wedding items

Overall, Thanksgiving was a hit I think. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, and for the most part, I think our house accommodated that amount of people pretty well which was a huge relief. We love to entertain so having room for large parties was important to us, so I’m glad the house delivered for us.

Joey carving his first turkey…it was a high pressure situation

Joey’s family stayed for a couple of days after Thanksgiving and it was wonderful having them here. Jason, Joey’s brother had been up before to help us move (god bless him), but it was Joey’s parents, and cousin Melissa’s first time seeing the house and we were so happy they came!

Jason really went above and beyond helping us out before the party, and Melissa was a cleaning dynamo after the party, which was awesome cause I was waay too full to feel like cleaning. 🙂 They were also amazing and helped us accomplish something we’d been meaning to do forever which was plant the Meyer Lemon Tree from our wedding. It was very close to death, and the lime tree was certainly dead, but they dug the hole and planted that baby for us, so hopefully we’ll have some blossoms this spring to commemorate our anniversary.

All and all we had a fantastic weekend celebrating with family and friends, and I can’t wait for more functions like that in the future!!