Tea Parties and Thanksgiving

 

1.) Little Girl had a birthday this past month, and so we had a birthday party. 

Planning for this has been going on since June, when two rapid fire family birthdays necessitated party planning as a distraction tactic to combat overwhelming jealousy. We decided on a tea party, and I've been keeping an eye out for china cups and tea set things at Goodwill (as an aside, use that fancy china set you got for your wedding. I saw a lot of very pretty china that had obviously spent its life wrapped in newspaper in a cabinet somewhere selling two for a dollar). 

Due to a tiny house and cold, rainy weather, we ended up splitting the party in two. Little Girl's actual birthday ended up being a get together with her grandmother, aunt, and a couple family friends, then she got to have a couple of her cousins and her other grandmother over the next day. 

It turned out well, and I think Little Girl had fun. I ended up digging out some of Chris's grandmother's china (with the strict understanding that only adults would be handling it) as well as my thrift store finds, and the result was eclectic but still elegant enough. 

It also gave me a chance to use up some Halloween candy and try out my grandmother's 1950s era cookie press. 

2.) Thanksgiving is also being cut up into two separate gatherings this year. 

The first was yesterday, when everyone else had theirs. We went to mass that morning as a family (I'm glad we had the opportunity to do that, but I was also thankful it was mercifully short), came home and made a big pan of green bean casserole while the Macy's parade played in the background, 

and then headed over to my parents' house for dinner. 

Tomorrow (Saturday), we're hosting my husband's family for supper. Which, given our tiny house, is going to be hosted in our carport, enclosed by tarps and heated by a chimnea. 

I'm slightly nervous about how well that'll pan out, especially with the damp weather we've been having, but life's an adventure, so why not? Chris smoked a turkey this morning in our grill, and I'll be making a pan of bread pudding later. 

Then, at some point, I've got to dig out my advent stuff and figure out what we're doing for candles, because our old ones finally reached the point of unusability last year (which...four or five years is pretty good for candles. I'm thinking about getting big, thick, white ones again and seeing if we can make them last until Little Boy is in middle school). 

And that's life around here.