Thanksgiving in Vastly Intricate.

So this post is mostly for my non-American friend =) I wanted to share my Thanksgiving with you. I took a few photos but they aren’t the best. I was in a hurry when snapping them, but I’ll do better next time haha.

In America, we celebrate Thanksgiving on November 25th. However, we really start prepping on it the day before.. and even several days before if you have a turkey! Haha.

So on the day before Thanksgiving, I began prepping food. We didn’t have a ton of people this year. Usually, we have around 7 people. My husband had to work and my aunt couldn’t come this year. Sooo there was only 5 of us total. I didn’t go all out like I normally would, but we still had wayyyy too much food! I began preparing my chicken and dumplings the night before. It takes them about 8 hours to cook in the crockpot. I have to put all the ingredients in, let the chicken cook, then take it out and shred it and put it back in.. and finally, add in the dumplings. I have made homemade ones before, but I have found that using flaky biscuit dough actually turns out much yummier! I also season it when it’s finished cooking. Everyone always requests these each year and they want to take leftovers home with them, so I usually end up making double!

Most people do turkey on Thanksgiving (it’s my favorite!), but my family prefers ham so my dad smoked/grilled one of those. We also had chicken and dressing which is super yummy too.. and some baked beans! Excuse the horrible pic but it was in the oven haha.

We also had green beans (pic), creamed corn, rolls, some kind of green pea salad my aunt made that I had never tried until then haha, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes with gravy.

Then for dessert, pecan pie is always something everyone requests. I typically do a chocolate pecan pie, but my mother bought a regular pecan pie this year so I didn’t end up having to make that one! We also had a coconut pie, chocolate chip pie, and I made a chocolate brownie pie. OH and my aunt brought some edible cookie dough that she bought at the store! Haha.

Now that we’ve covered the food..

My favorite part of Thanksgiving has always been watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv. It’s this huge parade they have in New York City and there’s all kinds of gigantic balloons and floats and marching bands.. hopefully I can see it in person one day! I always love watching on tv while getting ready for everyone to come over to my house. There’s also a dog show that comes on afterwards where they judge the dogs.. sometimes I watch it too because they are just all sooo cute!

After everyone has gone home, it’s time for football! My favorite football team plays our biggest rival Thanksgiving evening. My husband was home from work by then, so we all changed into our shirts with our team name on it. Even my two dogs have little bandanas they wear with our fav football team! Thankfully, we won!

After we spend Thanksgiving day being thankful for our family and all we have, the next day is what we call Black Friday. It’s where everyone gets up super early and goes to the stores to buy things that are on sale. Yes, we are thankful for what we have one day.. and then go fight the crowds to get stuff the next day! Haha. We didn’t get up super early this year. We waited closer to mid-morning so most of the crowds had went home. I bought a few Christmas presents for friends/family and some stocking stuffers as well.

Hope this gives you a glimpse into my Thanksgiving holiday here in America! Everyone celebrates in different ways and has different foods and such, but this is how we do it!