Thanksgiving preparations are afoot in our house.
      Groceries shopping, bags hauling, fruit and vegetables slicing, dicing, and spicing, bread baking, turkey brining, appetizers arranging, deserts baking….
Sounds like mad house? Sounds like your house?  Yep, that’s us today.

     In the middle of all the preparations and creative chaos, I decided to stop and smell the roses ( in this case decorate the stones). The whole family agreed we should have a Thanksgiving tradition different than any other year. After a long deliberation what exactly that tradition should be, I came up with the idea to use river stones, preferably a bit larger than regular pebbles, and write 2 inspirational words on them ( one on the bottom side, one on top).
    
     Each person on the table would get a stone and then say what they are thankful for in 2012. They will keep the stone for a whole year as inspiration and a reminder to never forget what is important in their lives.
How I did them? We were hiking and I just had some river stones ready, but you can virtually find them anywhere, including in stores sold by the bag. So, I washed and dried the stones I had, then prepared a list of words for both sides and arranged them by pairs in a random order. Then I simply used a permanent marker to write the words on the stones.  Each one of these is special in it’s own way, not only because of the combination of words, but because of the unique and natural look they have.

Now, please don’t think our Thanksgiving suddenly became all Zen. Well, not because of the stones anyway. I think the sangria helps significantly in this aspect. Some Cotes Du Rhone with fresh strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, pomegranate, peaches, mango, lemons, tangerines, apples and lime. What can be better, right?

I always make it the night before, it brings all the flavors together ant it is simply unbelievable the next day.

 Of course the kids get their very own alcohol free version too. 🙂

The menu is simple, yet we tried to balance the tastes as much as possible.

We will begin with some light appetizers ( accompanied by the sangria)
– cheese and crackers
– shrimp coctails

– Pear, walnut, blue cheese, cranberries and sour cream endive “cups”
Then we will move to something more substantial:
– The Turkey ( of course!)

– corn casserole
– stuffing
–  roasted garlic mashed potatoes
– home made bread

And we will finish with :

– banana cream pie
– pumpkin pie
– pumpkin ice cream with roasted walnuts, honey,chocolate marshmallow cookie, and cinnamon.

I wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving, may love, respect and gratitude warm your holiday tomorrow!

Annie

P.S : And don’t forget my promotion code ANNIESCHRISTMAS10 for 10% OFF your order in my Etsy store.

Happy Thanksgiving