In normal Whitney fashion, here is a late blog post about our first Thanksgiving we EVER hosted!
Our Thanksgiving mantle!
Thanksgiving was super special this year for many reasons, it was the first time we had our parents + siblings together for a holiday, we had my two adopted sisters (Carissa, the Swede - Katie, the NYer), and Katie's brother Matt from New York over too. It was a full house, but so much fun!
Everyone's setting was accompanied with fresh herbs. Fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme. Herbs are such a simple way to make things a little more special.
Because I am absolutely insane, I still believed everything had to be done homemade. Not just our meal, but I mean everything.. place cards, table setting, to go boxes, and even SODA. We accomplished everything except the gravy (weird how something so easy ended up the one thing we didn't make haha).
For our table, I wanted a rustic theme, so I covered it in a ton of mason jars with tea lights. I had also covered in burlap cocoa bean bags from Theo Chocolate.
Here is the table still fully set. Mucho loves to Matt and Kirk for helping me set our table the night before so I could be calm on Thanksgiving day!
I had made two homemade soda bases, one cream soda, the other, apple cider soda. It is basically a syrup that you mix in with club soda. Pretty darn good, using very little sugar, accompanied by vanilla bean and tasty spices.
This was my little cocktail & soda station
This was the cocktail I had made for the group. It had thyme simple syrup, bourbon, lemon, apple cider, bitters and garnished with fresh thyme and an apple slice. This was a total hit, Kirk and I made it again when we were decorating our gingerbread houses this year. So, so good. I tweaked the recipe to our taste, but this is basically the recipe.
Because this was our first Thanksgiving, we had assigned some dishes to our parents. Seriously SO THANKFUL to our sweet mothers for taking some stress off of us. Lynn had brought over her signature mashed potatos + made an amazing crab app + sweet potatoes while my mom did her signature potato dish (Yes, Kirk, his sis, my little sis, and I requested both!), stuffing, and stuffed mushrooms for an app.
If that doesn't already sound like a huge amount of food, I had made a warm artichoke dip, the Heinrich gourmet cheese plate, and a mock of Lot No. 3's goat cheese toast with candied pecans and balsamic redux -- my mom is basically obsessed with this and so I wanted to attempt it.
Kirk and I than proceeded to make green beans with pancetta covered in brown butter, rosemary sea salt buttermilk biscuits, an 18 pound turkey, and homemade cranberry sauce with vanilla beans.
...and obviously for dessert I made my spiced pumpkin pie, an apple crumble pie, and oh yeah..cinnamon ice cream. Seriously, we were so gluttonous. Just typing all that sounds ridiculous, I totally understand how everyone went into food coma after.
I had no time whatsoever to take pictures of final dishes, but here is my gigantic plate of food :)
Matt was very sweet, and allowed our spoiled baby cat to sit with him at the end of the meal.
See.. I wasn't lying. Everyone was over the feast and couldn't move.
We had sent each guest home with a white box covered in Thanksgiving cut outs (Thanks sweet mama in law!), and with a booklet filled with ALL the recipes from our evening. I had each mom send me all their recipes, and pasted them into little notebooks I had got from the craft store for $1. A total steal for how cute the end product was. I will take a picture and post it, so..cute.
The rest of November in a nut shell: Insane.
My sweet little desert biz was super busy! I was so thankful from all the support I got from everyone. The whole week prior to Thanksgiving I was in crazy mode baking pies, caramels, brittle, etc. for customers! Our kitchen looked like a factory, the kitchen was production, and our kitchen table was full of packaging supplies with the best packaging elves (Kirk & Katie) helping me.
This is a picture from one of our customers. This is how we packaged our pies, cute huh?!
Crafted also had it's first event at Getty Images, supporting InfluenceHer. It was such a great event and I met some awesome women. And... all of the product I brought SOLD OUT! I was super psyched!
My little table at the event!
It was my lovely sis in law, Angela's birthday November 10th! Happy birthday sissaloo! She requested a spice cake, so I came up with this little rustic cake. Inspiration from Hilary Duff's wedding cake of not fully frosted.
And lastly, my beautiful baby sissy got into WSU and U of A! Congrats baby Shawnzy!! I love you!
Isn't she a little cutie!
Well folks, that is all for now! Kirk and I are now on a work date where I will be completing Crafted's first round menu. :) Stay tuned!
