Happy Thanksgiving my favorite people! It’s the eve of Thanksgiving as I start writing this post and I have made all of my foods for tomorrow. It’s just us, which is easy and not easy. We do not have to make a big deal out of getting ready and cleaning. Phew. My mop broke while I was mopping the kitchen floor so it’s a good thing no one is coming and my house does not have to be clean. It would be a bonus, not a requirement for just us. But…if we want to taste all of the tastes that a Thanksgiving dinner promises, I need to make all of those tastes ourselves. I did. And I kept it as easy as possible. And boy will it be delicious.

Now, I am thankful that I am done because I am tired of cooking and cleaning-ish.

Okay, so to amuse myself while I cooked and kinda sorta cleaned, I mentally listed some of my “thankful for” moments. In no particular order…here they are…

The sky. Of course. Sunrises, sunsets and all of the beautiful colors that stop me in my tracks.

Being a dreamer. My current coloring book project for grown-ups needed a bit more revision than I wanted to do, but I added a few extra days to my deadline and am now super-de-duper happy that I did! It required two different cover creations for me to be happy and some additions to the inside that I had wanted to do but didn’t want to take the time to do but my husband said would be a really good idea if I did. I just received my second proof only moments ago, and at first glance, yippee! I will have to spend more time going through it to double-check spelling issues and that dang grammar thingy that people get so worked up about. You know, like when a sentence uses a proposition to end with? Being Thanksgiving Eve and all, I will practice self-control and not do it now. I will get my flashlight out later and hide under my covers to look at it when I am supposed to be sleeping.

Then there are the obvious things not to be over-looked like our health, our home and my husband’s job.

I am also very thankful for butter, sugar and flour.

Home cooks and family recipes. This Taste of Home cookbook is my newest addition and I am only one-fifth of the way through and already almost every page is sticky-noted. After laughing about it, I realized that I love home cooks and their recipes the most. I get so excited about recipes that have been passed down in families and I love to think about our grandma’s and the occasional grandpa cooking for their families.

GIFT IDEA! If you have someone who loves to cook, and especially those who get excited about home cooking, this is a great gift. Make sure you include some sticky note pads!

My family. I am so thankful for my family. A current project of mine to celebrate them is creating real old-fashioned photo albums for us. It’s a biggie. I kept up with it the first few years of my babies’ lives then I was too busy. Then I just had stacks of photos. Then I started at it again and tried to work backward while keeping up with the current year. Then life got busy again. Then, there were no longer even any printed photos. I am in serious project management mode now and am determined to git ‘er done. I am not going to worry about having the photos in super chronological order. The project will never get finished if I do. But, I am making sure that I jot down some notes on the backs of my photos. My great-grandma taught me to do this because at some point I would not remember the details and it was also especially helpful for those who looked through the albums long after I was in Heaven. I can often be found grumbling about it because it is time-consuming but great-grandma told me to do it and I am glad I did. As I started back into this project, I now have three kids who all looked alike as babies. And I am getting old-ish so my memory really did forget some of the details.

I made baby albums for my kids on their last birthdays and they love those albums. They take them on our road trips.

GIFT IDEA! In this day and age of computerized everything, it’s not the same being all curled up around the computer to look at pictures. A real photo album is a great gift. Just make sure you write on the back of the picture like great-grandma said.

I am very thankful for extra frozen dough balls in my freezer. When I took my husband’s rolls out of the oven (yes, he has special rolls because I was mixing up the roll routine this year with some flavors and his Thanksgiving is not to be messed with) I noticed that I baked them with the plastic wrap on. Dadgum. I had just enough frozen dough left to make more rolls. Phew!

See that shiny melted plastic wrap?

And being thankful for butter, sugar and flour makes me thankful for cookies.

And bacon.

I am NOT thankful that I need to get new glasses. That is never a pleasant experience for many reasons. We ran into a store quickly to look at frames and I had to take some selfies to look at and share later. You can tell by the look on my face that this is not fun.

Does my knee look better in these glasses or

in these glasses?

I want big ones this time. And something unusual.

I am thankful for 2 gallon-sized baggies. I can prep my foods in pans and then store them safely. Luxury.

I am also thankful for browned butter. I know it can be over-used these days but I added some and a bit of brown sugar to my sweet potatoes and they are heavenly. It’s not too late – you can still do this!

I am thankful that I put more effort into balancing my days this year, which brought me many more moments to enjoy being present. I know that the Christmas Crazies are still around the corner and they get me every year, despite my best intentions, but this year I am way ahead of the game. I’ll keep you posted!

I am thankful that you will let my grammar issues slide in this post as I wanted to chat with you before our world’s get busy for a few days.

And, my BFF’s, I am very thankful for you. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday if you celebrate it or a wonderful Thursday if you do not. You deserve a moment to chill out and be present. Be with your special people and don’t worry about the details. Pretend your mop broke and that’s why you had to take a break instead of clean or that the rolls were baked with the plastic on and you needed to serve some store-bought rolls to buy yourself some quiet moments. It could happen!

Love ya,

Aaryne