Let’s Look At…Our Holiday Menu

Once a month, I link up with two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything), to share a “look” into some little aspect of our life. Sometimes it’s fashion related, sometimes home, sometimes how we do holidays. Here’s a peak back at what we’ve “looked” at so far this year:

Today we’re sharing our holiday menus.

I have to confess something. We’ve never hosted Thanksgiving for our family before. With both Nathan’s parents and my parents living in Kansas City, we go to one of our parents’ houses for Thanksgiving dinner.

There was one year in our second year of marriage that Nathan and I decided to do Thanksgiving by ourselves. We made all of the sides, cooked a turkey, opened up a nice bottle of wine, and enjoyed. When we were dating, we did a lot of cooking together, and it was a nice change to get to spend the whole day lounging around, cooking, and just relaxing. And seeing as COVID will likely ruin a lot of our normal Thanksgiving day plans, I imagine we’ll be doing some more cooking this year as well. It probably won’t be as relaxing as pre-kids Thanksgiving, but every holiday seems more special with them.

Here’s a picture from our first time we cooked Thanksgiving ourselves…when Sawyer was our only baby:

We start every Thanksgiving morning with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and I make homemade biscuits and gravy. I only make them once a year, so they’re super special!

I look at this picture from last year and remember just feeling exhausted by the end of the day. I was in my first trimester, and no one knew we were pregnant yet with baby boy #2.

Then this year, we’re planning on smoking a turkey for the first time ever. Nathan loves his Traeger, and he’s been wanting to try to smoke a whole turkey for awhile – so this is the year!

I’m going to pull out my recipes from our Thanksgiving several years back, and we’ll likely have…

  • Rolls
  • Stuffing! My favorite!
  • Green beans or brussels
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Mashed potatoes…I guess we’re big potato fans
  • And PIE!

I’ve been the pie maker in the family for several years now after going to “Pie School” with Grandma Monie (that’s Nathan’s grandma). Always in deference to the true pie queen, when Grandma isn’t available, I step up to the plate. 😊 And her speciality was always cherry pie, so we’ll have that with pumpkin.

Those are my handwritten notes on a sticky note on top of the recipe card from pie school so I remember how it’s supposed to look and feel.

Tell me, what are you known for making or bringing in your family???

6 thoughts on “Let’s Look At…Our Holiday Menu

  1. I’m known for making it ALL– LOL. I began hosting before my husband and I were even married when we had bought our first home. I love to cook and my mom has never really enjoyed it. Though somewhere around year 12 or 14 or so I announced that I was taking a hiatus from hosting any holiday as we had hosted them all (having the biggest house for lots of family members to congregate) and while I have slowly taken back on a few holidays they are on a much smaller scale. This thanksgiving it will just be us, my mom & my step- father.

    1. Ohhhh man. You are a rockstar! It will definitely be a very different, small Thanksgiving this year. But I’m kind of looking forward to it!

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