thanksgiving – Casa de Berry

2013, entertaining, family, holiday, november, thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2013

November 29, 2013November 28, 2013by casadeberry4 Comments

Our Thanksgiving celebration was pretty damn awesome, I have to say. We hosted as we have for the past few years, but this time it was super special because we got to meet the littlest member of the family – and the current titleholder of The Most Chunkalicious Thighs in Existence. Here she is with our oldest, who is so good with babies:

Our menu had most of the usual dishes, plus a butternut squash soup Steve had tried in Napa and wanted to recreate. It was my favorite part of the meal.

Other than cooing at the baby.

I forgot to include poached pears in the menu, it was something Steve tried a couple of years ago and it was a hit, so he makes it every year.

Seriously, our little cousin could feed a family of four for a week with one of her thighs.

We are not having any more kids so kindly allow me this temporary baby-insanity. Happiest baby ever. Mama J, you are doing a great job!

I hope your Thanksgiving – or your Thursday if you did not celebrate – was a good one. I do not partake of the brick-and-mortar Black Friday craze, but I will definitely be checking out online sales – are you braving the crowds to get a deal?

2012, entertaining, husband, thanksgiving

Food coma

November 23, 2012November 23, 2012by casadeberry2 Comments

Holy crap, that was a lot of food. And I didn’t even have turkey! Steve made an awesome bacon-wrapped pork loin so I went for that. And my mama’s world famous sweet potatoes with marshmallows. And Steve’s fabulous apple crisp.

My mom’s neighbor makes these adorable turkeys — mom bought a bunch and sent them to me for my table settings:

Don’t they look sweet?

I had set the table like this:

And then I remembered we were also having butternut squash bisque, so I had to re-do my settings to add the bowl – oops!

The little guys had to move to the chargers:

Here is the aforementioned pork loin; it was so moist and yummy!

And the bisque, which I will be enjoying later:

We have a silicone mold that we used for the cornbread:

They turned out so cute, little leaves and pumpkins.

Huge biscuits, gingery honey carrots, and the sweet potato/marshmallow casserole in the back:

We also had delicious turkey breast made by my in-laws, stuffing and gravy, green bean casserole, spicy lentils (kind of random, but I made them last year and people liked them), garlic mash, sweet potato medallions with caramelized walnuts, and I am sure I am forgetting more stuff, but it was all yummy and most of it was made by my awesome husband. Our cousin J brought a fabulous veggie basket with all sorts of goodies, including my favorite olives from Trader Joe’s.

We had a great time, and the boys had a blast playing with their cousins. We have big bellies and happy hearts. I hope your thanksgiving was a great one!

2012, autumn, thanksgiving

So thankful

November 21, 2012November 21, 2012by casadeberry2 Comments

Tomorrow we will be celebrating Thanksgiving. I was not born or raised in the U.S., but my parents and I celebrated Thanksgiving because we found a new start here.

I am an incredibly lucky girl and have so much to be thankful for — my husband and sweet boys, my mama, memories of my dear dad, lovely friends and family who support me, and last but definitely not least, all the wonderful people I have met online, including my sweet readers!!

For those of you celebrating this most American of holidays, I wish you good times with your loved ones. If this is just another Thursday for ya, then I hope it’s a good one ;D

2011, autumn, baking, boys, candle, cooking, dining room, entertaining, family, food, home, husband, kitchen, love, lunch, november, thanksgiving, wine

Our 2011 Thanksgiving

November 25, 2011November 25, 2011by casadeberryLeave a Comment

Our thanksgiving lunch went beautifully; Steve and I planned, made lists, set up a schedule, and with some help from our family, we had a great time. I printed the menu and set it up in the dining room:

My father-in-law showed up early — he was in charge of the turkey — and also helped out with the rest of the cooking. He and my oldest had a blast peeling potatoes:

Soon my boy was a potato peeling expert!

I had told my husband that I’d seen (can’t remember where!) an idea to use a wreath as a centerpiece and he came up with this:

Isn’t that cool?

Soon the rest of the family showed up and we started doing the oven-revolving-door dance. Dishes would go in, in twos and threes, and something yummy would come out. Soon our dining room table looked like this:

This was about half of the food we made. The wine took up one of the hutches ;D and the desserts people brought took up another.

Here is some of my wonderful family.

The little cups hold the butternut squash bisque, which was DELICIOUS – Steve made it from scratch and I am so happy there is some left over, because I’m having some of it for lunch!

One of my favorite moments was when we all shared what we were grateful for and my oldest said he was grateful for “the colors of autumn”, I thought that was so unusual and sweet.

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful, and if you don’t celebrate it, then I hope today is a great Friday and I wish a wonderful weekend for everyone! I’m going to leave you with the menu we had for our Thanksgiving Lunch.

boys, craft, fall, gardening, mantel, november, orange, paper, thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Mantel

November 14, 2011November 15, 2011by casadeberry1 Comment

As you might have seen in my silly turkey garland post, our mantel has been de-Halloween-ed and is now ready for Thanksgiving. But last Thursday the boys and I made a little something to add up there.

I got the inspiration for this from pinterest, of course, but I decided to make this craft with stuff I had on hand.

I have been saving glass jars for the past few months, I’m trying to replace plastic food storage as much as I can, and I had a few pasta sauce jars that weren’t all the same size but they worked in a group.

Then I added a band made of scrapbook paper, created the letters and border on Photoshop, and added some curling ribbon. The contents of the jars are dried out corn husks and stems from my backyard.

I think it looks nice atop my dark mantel:

As you can tell, my boys have started to pick off some of the poor turkeys’ eyes and even one of the faces (look to the right end of the garland). As long as they don’t eat them, I’m fine with it 😀 The dried sunflowers on the right are also from my backyard, we got tons of seeds, so yummy!

Hope you have a great Monday!

boys, craft, fall, family, november, paper, thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Craft: Turkey Garland

November 9, 2011November 30, 2011by casadeberry3 Comments

I saw this cute place setting craft at my favorite paper store

Source: paper-source.com via Claudia on Pinterest

and I’d been thinking of making a garland with my oldest, so I decided to make a variation of this cute turkey. I had all the materials except the eyes, so that was $1.99 spent.

First I punched out the body out of brown construction paper and cut tan triangles for the beaks:

Then my boy added googly eyes – we thought that would be a lot more fun! I asked him to go crazy coloring with oranges and reds on yellow paper, for the plumage.

Some of them looked silly, and my son said he wanted to make them all different because people are all different 😀

Then we taped the turkeys onto orange curling ribbon:

Et voila! Here is our beautiful, fun, and very silly turkey garland!!!

I love walking into my house and seeing this fun garland that my son and I made together. He loves doing crafts with me and I am planning more Thanksgiving fun – hope you enjoyed our Turkey Garland!