Thanksgiving Times Two

Celebrating our first holiday as a married duo was a milestone for us. This year we celebrated twice, with my parents' Thanksgiving dinner the Sunday before and our Thanksgiving the day of. And that means there was twice the food, twice the movies watched, and twice the family time. This whole married thing during the holidays is turning out to be a winner. I can only imagine how Christmas will be combing all three families! We are so thankful for the family time, delicious food, and old and new traditions. If only we could rewind time and do it all again. I guess, that's the reason Christmas follows so soon, because after an amazing Thanksgiving, no one wants to wait too long for celebrating another holiday.

And for the actual Thanksgiving day, husband and I decided on starting our new tradition for the November holiday. Starting off the morning with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and a steaming homemade quiche, we nestled in front of the fire for the first couple of morning hours. Our day then turned into a trip to the tree farm to cut down the Christmas tree we tagged two weeks prior (here).

We're big on fun drinks and appetizers. Whenever we get a chance to concoct something new, we delight in creating a tasty treat or a sparkling drink. For Thanksgiving, we opted for pomegranate fizzies and spinach mushroom tarts. Mushrooms turned out to be a theme for the evening, as they also showed up in our wild mushroom and bacon stuffing (phenomenal). Our entire day was about making twists on the classic food dishes of the holiday. Having had the traditional food at my parents' on Sunday, we tackled trying new versions of popular foods served on turkey day. So there were Cornish hens instead of turkey, au gratin Brussels sprouts instead of green bean casserole, and stovetop russet and sweet potato hash instead of whipped mashed potatoes.

After all the festivities we settled in the living room with my family to watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation; a classic movie that we are merging into our own Thanksgiving tradition from the Hills' family tradition. Husband and I agree, making new traditions is a lot of fun and we look forward to passing them down to our children one day. Taking a holiday and making it your own, makes it so wonderful. We hope you and yours had quite the amazing holiday surrounded by your dear ones!