First off, I was blessed with the opportunity to serve one of my neighbors. She recently had back surgery so I offered to prepare her a meal. A few days later, she called and said she got a free turkey from Winco (they were giving away free turkeys with $100 purchase) and asked if I would like it. I gratefully accepted it and it was a huge 25 pounder!
Thanksgiving Day, we did our traditional buffet meal with my in-laws then watched movies at their house in the afternoon. I made 2 pumpkin pies a few days earlier and we had one that night. Friday morning, I made the turkey. We had turkey dinner with the other pumpkin pie on Friday night and had the church missionaries over. The leftover turkey gave us meat for sandwiches all weekend, meat for 2 large pots of soups, and there is still some in the freezer! I made a turkey vegetable soup and white turkey chili. I baked four loaves of bread and sent 2 quarts of soup with a loaf to my neighbor who gave me the turkey. The remaining bread and soup was served at my son's family birthday party.
This year we decided to do a simple family party for Austin. He wanted a Monster's Inc theme. I made a chocolate cake and used green frosting to make a Mike Wazowski and also made frosted sugar cookies that looked like monsters with candy eyeballs. Austin saw a "Pin the eye on Mike Wazowski" game at Party City and said "we can make this" and so for $1 worth of poster board, we made our own game to play with his cousins. We got plain green goodie bags and Austin drew on them.
Austin was sad he couldn't invite his school friends, but it seems the trend is to invite the whole class so no one is left out. So I asked his teacher if I could do a story with the class on his birthday. Austin chose the story "Mouse Paint" which involves a little magic trick of using a paper paint pot to change the white mice to different colors. The kids loved it! We ended the activity with cookies, juice, and a goodie bag for each student with a poem, some white cardstock, and a mini set of watercolors! Afterschool, I took him to King Putt mini golf with his cousin and 2 friends from church. Even by doing all this, I still spent only about half of what I have had to spend in previous years for his parties.
I did not shop Black Friday this year! Instead, I used the time to make several gifts by hand which I will share in another post. I ordered a few Christmas gifts online from independent crafters on Etsy and Facebook.
