Assorted leaves collected from our neighborhood, rinsed and ready to be used as decorations. I’ve already decorated a shelf in the IVAR unit in the Houseproud living room with natural leaves comme ca, and I’m planning to collect more to make a spray to hang on our apartment door …

Hello, my pets!  I’m just slipping into the blog for a few minutes to wish you and yours a warm and happy Thanksgiving, and then I’ll go back to fussing about our digs in preparation for Thanksgiving.

And what about you?  Are you running through the same list of questions that I am?  Do you have your menu planned? Is your shopping done?  Have you started prepping food yet, or will you wait until the day before or even the day itself?  What are your guests bringing, and where will you put it when they bring it?  What dishes will you use to serve the food, and are they clean?  Do you have enough dishes that match – or sorta match?  What about napkins?  Oh, what will we do about napkins …

Collection of cleaning supplies, ready to be put into action. Here’s a tip I just learned – perhaps you do this already – you can use baking soda to clean cast iron cookware in minutes!  I’ve used coarse salt to remove stubborn particles of food from cast iron before, but only recently learned that baking soda will do the job on less stubborn bits, too. If the pan simply won’t come clean, have fun with science: pour a little vinegar into the pan with the baking soda and watch it foam away those greasy food particles!

Ah, but does the litany of questions above make you think that I am stressed and miserable?  Mais non!  Questions like these make my houseproud heart very happy: they help me realize how fortunate am I to have family coming to join us, how good it is to be able to share food and drink, and how happy it is to have a roof over my head and a sweet and supporting Mister. If I didn’t have these blessings then I wouldn’t have these particular questions haunting me, now would I??

And so along with happily obsessing about what I will serve and how I will serve it, I have been busy decorating the Houseproud homestead and making sure that it is reasonably clean.  And yea, verily I say unto you:  it is clean and it is decorated.  I even remembered to buy more dish soap, in anticipation of the endless piles of dirty dishes that I will create over the next few days!

Burlap flowers ready to be sewn onto the wreath form. The photo doesn’t show the leaves I made to go with the flowers – it just shows the scrap leather that the leaves were cut from.  The wreath might actually get finished in time for Thanksgiving.  It might.  I’ll include a photo of the completed wreath in my next post.  Until then, wish me luck in figuring out HOW to attach the flowers to the wreath form …

But that’s my cue to leave you, my dears:  I have dishes to get dirty (the turkey gets seasoned tonight and braised tomorrow), a recipe to track down (I’m sure it’s in one of my cookbooks, and hopefully the recipe won’t require another visit to the grocery store), and a number of burlap flowers (!!!) to attach to a wreath form.  Before I sign off, I send you mondo best wishes that your feast preparations go swimmingly, and that the day itself is full of love and happiness.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!  – Your ever lovin’ munakins