Scrambling for a Table

So, this year was my first ever year hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at our house.  I was ready, though, since last year I made a turkey and all of the trimmings on Christmas Day for just Todd and me.  I had made a turkey on a few other occasions before, as well, so I had the turkey part all set.

Still, I was nervous about actually having someone besides Todd eat my Thanksgiving dinner.  I mean, you only get ONE Thanksgiving dinner a year, right?  I had a list and a schedule, and I started cooking at 10am, after a 4 mile run on the treadmill.

The bad part?  Well, here's my confession -- Todd and I have neglected to fully furnish our house.  When we first started dating, he had no furniture in the master bedroom (he was sleeping in the spare bedroom), the living room or the dining room.  While we spent a whole lot of time furnishing and decorating the master bedroom, and we kinda-sorta have some furniture in the living room, the dining room is still totally empty.  We've been reluctant to furnish it because we were thinking we might move to Florida and we hated to furnish a room only to have to pay to move a bunch of furniture.  This is especially a pain for the dining room, which we only might use a couple times a year, tops.

Well, we refinanced our house, and we decided that as part of the refinance that we'd stay here in Maryland for another 5 years.  This gave us more of a reason to furnish the dining room.  Since I knew that we were going to host Thanksgiving as far back as the summer, we started shopping for dining room furniture MONTHS ago.  We found NOTHING that we liked.  Everything was either too expensive, too big, or too traditional (which we feel would look silly in a Florida house if/when we eventually move).  In October, we found a Pottery Barn set we liked on Craigslist, only to have it slip out of our hands when someone else got to it first.  We procrastinated some more, and then by the beginning of November, it was obvious that we weren't going to get furniture by Thanksgiving.

So, we ended up going with folding tables.  Except - one folding table was too narrow - the plates were touching each other.  We put two folding tables together, bought a lovely table cloth (well, two table cloths) and Voila!  It was actually really nice.  We only had five of us total eating, and it worked out perfectly.  It didn't even seem like folding tables, to be totally honest.

We do have china, since my mom gave me her formal china several years ago.  She also gave us a set of crystal for our wedding, which was so nice because it's our only wedding/couple type of thing that was purchased for US, and not our parents or for one of our previous marriages.  So, the whole set up ended up being quite elegant.

As far as dinner went, we had the usual.  Apple pie, green bean casserole, dressing, turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes.  My brother made my grandmother's candied sweet potatoes.  Not to toot my own horn too much, but the turkey was perfect, the best one I've made so far.  The mashed potatoes - not so much.  Everything else was good.

It was nice using our dining room for the first time.  We're continuing our ongoing quest for dining room furniture, but we'll see how easily we get it.  Part of me does actually kind of like the whole folding table thing because it allows us to use our dining room however we want - from empty room for playing cornhole to buffet (put the folding tables against the wall) to dining room.  So, maybe it's not so bad... LOL

Todd took some photos, but I haven't seen them yet.  I did snap this one with my cell phone the morning after Thanksgiving...  Our cat wanted to enjoy some delicious turkey, too!