Three Weekly Recap

Oh wow!  I just took a big long unscheduled break from blogging, didn't I?  I apologize to my many readers ( Hey C!).  I do have an excuse of sorts - we finally moved into our new house!  Yay!  So, we were without internets for almost a week - I know, the horror!  Two days after moving in, my parents arrived to have Thanksgiving with us and help us get settled in.  Then the next day my back went out and I was essentially out of commission for about three days. And on and on and on.

  Thanksgiving went relatively smoothly considering that I was injured and couldn't bend or lift anything.  Oh, and that only half of the kitchen was unpacked and we had to keep looking for things "Where is my measuring cup!?!  Where is my meat thermometer?"  and so on.  I wanted to try an unconventional turkey recipe that involved cutting it into pieces, so K did his manly duties and butchered the turkey into quarters (or something, I don't know butcher lingo).  It was manly, I tell you.  Also, we decided that next year we will go back to roasting a whole turkey, the way it should be done on Thanksgiving.

Aromatics

Deconstructed Turkey

My pie crust turned out waaaay too dry and could not be rolled out, so I had to press it into the pie pan.  Then I opened the can of pumpkin puree and it had a big black spot on it.  Panic!  But the pie was saved, because I had roasted a pumpkin that we got in our CSA earlier in the month, and frozen the puree.  It turned out to be one of the best pumpkin pies I have made ( although, admittedly, not the prettiest).

Ugly Pie, tasted great

Ready to eat (finally!)

 Much work was done on the house, my Step-dad installed my new chandelier for my closet!  Yay, it looks amazing.  He and K also put in our new garbage disposal, and we finally had our blinds installed, so we are not on display to the entire neighborhood anymore.

Imagine the sound of angels

Chandelier in the walk in!  Makes me happy every time I see it.

We also got our Christmas tree up and decorated.  When we first moved here, I was convinced that we would need to buy a fake tree, as I imagined that trees would be super expensive here.  Growing up in Alaska, almost everyone had fake trees because the real trees had to be shipped up from the lower 48 and were very expensive (unless you went with a true Alaskan tree, which are quite scraggly).

I asked my Alaskan friends to send me pictures of real Alaskan Christmas trees and my friend Sandi sent this one.  Ha!

My friend Alisha shared these pics of the tree her family had a few years ago.  Check out her awesome blog HERE!

A Real Alaskan Christmas Tree 

After living in Oregon for years, however, I got used to having a real tree.  And became very anti-fake tree.  I used to go to a tree farm where you could cut down your own tree, and I loved that.  I love establishing traditions that you can do every year with your family.  Although this year we didn't so much go to a tree farm as we went to Home Depot for our tree (Home Depot has become our home away from home) - we were still able to get a real tree!  I was so excited to have my parents here to help with the tree because to me, the fun part about getting a tree is making it a memorable outing and then decorating it together.  Since they won't be here for Christmas, it is a nice way to get to do some celebrating with them.

Tree!

 After the guys got it set up in the stand, we pulled out all of the Christmas boxes front the garage.  APPARENTLY some people think I have too many Christmas decorations.  I don't really know what they are talking about, I think I have just the right amount, but whatever.  The nice thing is that I was able to pick and choose my "theme" this year since I have built up a nice collection of ornaments (The one and only benefit of working retail.  25% discount plus 50% clearance (and sometimes 75% and sometimes even 90%)?  I have a lot of nice ornaments that I got on the cheap).  Since we are now living in the Valley of the Sun, I wanted to create some sort of wintery feeling in the house.  So I went with white, silver and gold for the tree.  I love it!  I have slowly been trying to get the rest of the house decorated, still working on it.

Wintery

But now we are fully moved into the new house, our guests have returned home, and so we are trying to return to the routines we had established in the past few months.  Cooking at home, meal planning, cleaning schedules... yes, we might be becoming adults.  Of course, our house is still filled with unpacked boxes, so I wouldn't bank on that yet.