The Boones: The Holiday Season is here!!

   IT'S HERE!! IT'S HERE!!! Christmas is here! LOVE is a complete understatement for this time of year! I love Thanksgiving and all that it entails. I love getting to cook way too many items, making things homemade that I normally don't get to make on any given day, and bake way too many things at once. It was just the three of us this year. Mom went down to spend Thanksgiving with Dad.

   I made as much of the food the day before because I wanted to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with Maddie. Jeff had to make mashed potatoes and gravy for the 50 of the marine students that morning. The night before I made homemade bread, Jeff's jello salad thing with mandarins and cool whip, Jeff's peach pie that is traditional to holidays for him, pumpkin cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting for the marines, cheesecake for me and Maddie, homemade strawberry puree (which I have fallen in love with), and blueberry lemonade. On Thanksgiving day, we did the potatoes, sweet potatoes, turkey with the stuffing inside and carrots underneath, broccoli, salad, homemade spinach dip, and gravy. Jeff kept trying to convince me to prepare less since it was just the three of us, but that would be breaking tradition. I just couldn't do it. I would rather eat on the meal for days than to have a regular small meal. We did eat on it for a few days, but can I just say that the turkey was BEYOND moist! Jeff went to pick it up out of the bag and it broke in half. It was still moist by the third day into it. It was a really good day with good food and family. It was sad that we didn't have family to spend it with though.

Of course the day after Thanksgiving is black Friday, but more importantly the day we put up the Christmas decor!! :) This is the day that I break out my NSYNC (YES, NSYNC) Christmas CD along with all of my other CD's, the Christmas tree goes up, all of my garland and lights, and decor goes up! I get all giddy and can't wait for this time of year! I'll post pictures of putting the trees (yes, Maddie has her own tree) up in another post because I have some great pictures!

    Jeff and I didn't plan on going out for Black Friday. He had a few things he had wanted to get, but we didn't see them in any ads and wasn't going to voluntarily go to a crazy store to see if they had them on sale. I had been wanting a food processor for years. As you know by now, I love to cook and bake! I am always trying new recipes, but couldn't try some because I didn't have a food processor. I found one for a great price and it was a food processor/blender duet! Which was exactly what I wanted because my blender is about to go out of commission. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE it? Jeff found a wet/dry vac at a good price that he has been looking for. We didn't leave the house until 11 and just hoped that they still had what we wanted. To our surprise, they still had a lot of things left at the store. Merry Christmas to us!

Be on the lookout for another post about our Christmas trees. Until then, enjoy the pictures!