Cheri over at
Its So Very Cheri, is hosting a Thanksgiving Traditions party today. So I thought I would join in on the fun. Better late than never (that's my motto). We are suppose to share our traditions and/or recipes. I thought I might as well throw in some more of my Thanksgiving decor. So I will also link up to Show and Tell Friday hosted by Cindy at
My Romantic Home. And Debra over at
Bungalow is having a Sharing Thanksgiving party on 11/17 that we can't forget about.
I have lived in southern California most of my life. My favorite Thanksgivings are the ones where the temperature actually feels like fall, which for us is in the 60's. I love when it's cold & windy. I hate the Thanksgivings where the temp is in the 80's or the 90's. It can go either way. So we never know what type of Thanksgiving we are going to have year to year.
My favorite Thanksgivings growing up where the ones where we went to Utah to visit my Grandparents. It was always cold at Thanksgiving there. And there was always the chance of snow. Plus my grandma was the best cook in the whole wild world. What could be better than family, food & cold weather for Thanksgiving?
The only thing that I did not like about spending Thanksgiving at my grandparents house was that we had to dress up in our Sunday best. I like comfortable, not stuffy. But now that I look back, I think I like that we dressed up for Thanksgiving. I just didn't like it then.
My favorite food at Grandma's house was her home made rolls and jam. I'll bet I could eat a dozen of them. I didn't, but I could have. Oh, and her pumpkin pies!!!! Yummy!!! One year she made 13 pumpkin pies. One for each grand child. That was the best!!!
And one year she had ice cream turkeys. Each slice of ice cream was shaped like a turkey.
I wish I had photos of our Thanksgivings in Utah, but I don't. Boo hoo. So I guess I'll just have to show you some more of my Thanksgiving decor at my house. If you missed my mantel or my china hutch, you can see them
here &
here.
This is the top of my trunk in my family room.
The glass pumpkins came from Sam's Club last month. I used them in my Halloween decor as well. But for Thanksgiving, I wrapped a fall bead garland around the pumpkins. Aren't they fabulous? I wanted mercury glass pumpkins, but the silver ones I found were just too darn expensive. I found these gold ones for about $20.00 for the 3.
I changed out everything on my 3 tier cake plate. I placed a cream colored leaf plate with a "Give Thanks" pumpkin on top. Then on the bottom 2 tiers I placed some ceramic pumpkins, some faux gourds, pine cones, acorns & some Indian corn.
The stuffed turkey came from Tender Heart Treasures a long time ago. I think they still carry it though, or one similar. I love that it has little forks as feet.
Before I show you more of my decor. I will tell you another Thanksgiving tradition. Ever since I can remember, every Thanksgiving we have a special jello salad. In fact, my recipe card says "Thanksgiving salad". The funny thing is that this salad is green which is more of a Christmas color, but we have it for Thanksgiving. I do make it at Christmas too, but it mostly known in my family for Thanksgiving.
I wish I had a photo. It is really yummy & really easy to make. Here is the recipe:
Thanksgiving Salad
2 small packages or 1 large package of lime jello
2 cups hot water
Can of crushed pineapple
1 lb tub of Cottage Cheese
Walnuts
1 cup heavy whipped cream or cool whip
Pour hot water over jello, mix till dissolved and let set until syrupy.
Add can of crushed pineapple (drained), cottage cheese & some chopped nuts.
Let almost set (I wait till it cools down some), then add one cup of heavy whipped cream. I'm lazy so I just use cool whip or generic brand.
Pour mixture into 9x13 Pyrex dish or any dish that you want to serve this from. Place in fridge until firm.
When it's time to serve, I just cut up into little squares on place on salad plate. Back when I was a kid, my mom & grandma always put a piece of lettuce on the plate first, then placed the jello salad on top. But I skip that part. I just love, love, love this salad. It is probably my most favorite jello salad. And yes, jello was a salad in our household, not a dessert.
Now back to my decor: Here is the shelf by my trunk & couch. It is pretty much the same as I had it for my "fall" decor. Except I added a new cloche that I got. Under the cloche I placed a turkey pilgrim, a small pumpkin, a pine cone & some filler. I also placed a garland standing up behind the cloche, in front of the silver tray. All the smaller pumpkins are dollar finds. The large copper pumpkin came from Target this year. The silver tray, pillars, books & candle holders being used as pedestals all came from various thrift stores.
Here is a close up of my cloche.
Look, I even decorated my cable box!!! Except we don't have cable, we have FIOS which is fiber optic. Even better. Dollar pumpkins again.
Here is the top of my TV armoire. I've stashed most of my white pitcher collection up here. The white pumpkin was made & given to me by a very dear friend a couple of years ago. And my sister made me the "Christ" tile a few years ago for Christmas. I leave it out all year round.
And this is the side table to the right of my couch. I placed my lamp on an old dictionary I picked up from the thrift store. The front cover of the book is embossed with letters. I wish they would have showed up in the photo. I placed a small silver pitcher with a faux dollar pumpkin on top and a ceramic pumpkin in front. This pumpkin is actually a salt shaker & part of a S&P set. I moved my girl statue from my mantel to this side table. And I placed a ceramic leaf tray on the table as well. I can't remember where I got the leaf tray. I've had it for years, but I think this is the first year I've actually put it out for display.
Have you noticed that I never show you photos of my couch? If you saw it, you'd know why. It needs to be cleaned & the back cushions need to be restuffed, or better yet, I need to make pillows for the back. Oh I have the fabric and the plans, I just keep putting it off. I told you I was a procrastinator. Luckily I don't procrastinate everything, or I'd have nothing to blog about.
Now for another Thanksgiving tradition. Up until 4 years ago, I've lived my entire adult life living in an apartment. I grew up in a house, but once I moved out on my own, I've lived in apartments. So we always had Thanksgiving at my parents house.
Except for 3 years when we decided we wanted to go to Disneyland on Thanksgiving instead. We thought Disneyland will be a ghost town on that day as everyone stays home to celebrate Thanksgiving. Boy were we wrong. Disneyland is packed on that day. What???? I thought everyone liked to eat turkey. But it seems, there are a lot of people who would rather go to Disneyland. It was a fun way to spend Thanksgiving, but every year, more & more people decided to do the same thing. Finally after 3 years, I decided that I was tired of the crowds & I really did miss eating turkey on Thanksgiving. So we went back to having Thanksgiving at my parents house.
And each year I said, someday when I get a house, we will have Thanksgiving at my house. Well as luck would have it, I bought my first house about 4 years ago. I still remember that first Thanksgiving after moving in. I was so excited to host my very first Thanksgiving.
Everyone in my family came. We had 24 people. We ate off of paper plates as that was all I had. But I was in heaven.
The next year I was at Marshall's when I found the most fabulous turkey plates. And they were cheap!!!! They looked like expensive transferware and they came in red/pink, blue, brown & multi color. Now I was in my pink faze, so of course I had to get the red/pink ones. Over the past 3 years I have picked up enough dinner plates, salad plates & bowls for my entire family. A set of 24. I've never owned so many of one plate pattern in all my life. And I own a lot of plates.
So for every year since we have moved into our house, we host Thanksgiving. The big joke in my family is that Kim has to have Thanksgiving as she has the turkey plates. Not to mention that sometimes we heat the pool and we swim on Thanksgiving. But we don't do that so much anymore, everyone would rather just sit in the jacuzzi spa. After eating a fabulously cooked Thanksgiving feast on our turkey plates.
And speaking of the famous turkey plates. Here is one on my cabinet. This cabinet sits at the end of my kitchen cabinets. I got this cabinet on clearance from JC Penny online years ago. I love the shape & details on this little cabinet. The color, not so much. It was billed as "off white", but it looks more like yellow to me. I'm not a yellow person. But I live with it as I've been too lazy to paint it. I will probably paint it black some day.
Don't you just love the turkey plate? Since I have so many, I use some of them for my Thanksgiving decorating. I usually don't have all 24 members of my family every year. The count for Thanksgiving this year, stands at 13 for now.
This little cloche is actually a light cover that I picked up at the thrift store awhile back. I wrapped twine around the bottom & placed over a wooden pilgrim girl. I then wrapped beaded garland around it.
This white pumpkin has been sitting here since fall began. I picked it up at a thrift store while on vacation in Arizona this summer. I just found some Halloween candy I had stashed in there that I forgot about. Luckily it was "smarties" so they are still good. I placed the pumpkin on a leaf plate to change it up some.
If you are still reading this, I applaud you. And I hope that you enjoyed reading about some of my Thanksgiving memories and traditions. And enjoyed my decor. Next week I will finish up showing my Thanksgiving decor. I have a little more in my kitchen & my living room.
I did have one reader who asked where I store everything. My husband put plywood down up in our garage rafters. He also put in a pull down ladder that we found on clearance at Lowe's. So I have all kinds of storage up in my rafters. I put all my holiday decorations in colored boxes so I know by looking at the color of the box, which holiday it's for. My Halloween stuff is in black, bright orange or purple boxes. My fall/Thanksgiving stuff is in rust, muted orange or green boxes. My Christmas in Red or Christmas green boxes, 4th of July in blue boxes, Valentine's Day in Clear boxes with red lids, Easter in pastel colored boxes. This helps in finding the right boxes.
Plus I have specific areas for each holiday. But don't think that I am the organizing queen, far from it, I'm just a flunky. My rafters are still a mess with everything else. It's just the holiday stuff that stays fairly organized.
If you saw my garage and/or rafters, you'd really think I was a hoarder. I just keep it all in hidden. Well at least you can't see it from the house. Unless you open the garage door.
Sorry to get off track. But I do love my stuff. And I do love decorating. I will start my Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving. Since I don't have money to shop this year, I'll spend all my time & energy decorating. That's my favorite part anyways.
Take care and be sure to come back to see some more of my decor next week.
Kim
Linking this up to:
I didn't want to drag down my boxes of Fall/Thanksgiving stuff (again the lazy person won out). I decided to get down just a few things & to use stuff I already had around my house.
I didn't have to change up much on this shelf. I took off the "spooky" labels from the bottles. And added a fall wreath to one of the bottles. Instant FALL. The wreath is actually a portion of some fall garland I bought at Michael's a few years back. I like it hanging from the bottle.
Took the black spider web lace off the pumpkin. Placed a Thanksgiving image in a small frame. Actually the Thanksgiving print sits in this frame all year round. It usually sits behind a vintage rose print. But I just switch the prints around when Thanksgiving rolls around each year.
Easy, simple changes.
I changed out the empty white frame for this cream one that has been on the mantel. I just placed it the other direction. I also used the book page wreath I made. I've hung it from some brown damask ribbon from Walmart.
I haven't changed out the letter balls from the apothecary jar in awhile. But they seem to work for every holiday. I will be changing them out for Christmas though. I found some Christmas balls with Christmas words I will be using instead.
On the left side I just added a couple of grape vine balls that I've had. I needed something to go under the cloche & these 2 balls fit perfectly. I added a fall wreath around the base.
Here is a close up of the fall print I printed out from my image collection. The frame came from Walmart years ago. They came in a set of 2 frames for 99 cents. They are small, but the perfect size for adding a small print wherever I need one.
This wreath has been one of my most favorite projects this year. I haven't grown tired of it yet.
Now we will move on to the top of my TV armoire. I didn't have to change out much from my Halloween decor.
I did change out the Halloween subway art for this Thanksgiving/fall one. It was a free printable from Betty Crocker Wannabe. I just adore you gals who make up this stuff & then give it to us for free. You are my idols.
To my birdcage I added some more of my grape vine balls & then added a white pumpkin on top. I replaced a Halloween print with a big copper pumpkin. Both the pumpkins came from Target last year.
Nothing changed on this side from what I had going on for Halloween.
I had planned on hanging paper leaves from the sticks every day with something I am thankful for. But the lazy person in me said, Nah! Besides, now it is the 15th & I would have to do too much thinking to come up with 15 things I am grateful for in one day.
