Thanksgiving 2018 was a wonderful celebration!

I would like to share some of the pictures from this year’s holiday festivities. It is a lot of planning and hard manual labor, but it is worth every minute of it. Every year it becomes more magical for my family and our guests.

I carefully plan the menu for the evening, and believe the presentation of the menu is almost as important as the presentation of the food. I display it on a large chalkboard and have a calligrapher write the menu on it so everyone would know what was being served.

How fun is this?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, every year one family chooses a charity that we all chip in and donate to. This year we donated to the Jared Branfman Sunflowers for Life Fund, for Pediatric Brain and Cancer Research. I originally was going to go with a silver theme, however, since the charity had sunflowers, I added yellow and sunflowers to the theme. This charity means so much to all of us, as our cousin, Jared Branfman succumbed to this cancer several years ago.

So, silver and yellow with sunflowers it was.

The flowers were very beautiful this year and the sunflowers made them even more special.

Throughout the years, my husband and I have collected antique china plates, each one with a different pattern. I think this makes my table look unique and different each year. As you can see I also incorporated the sunflower theme to each place setting.

We talk to our bartender for the evening in advance and make up a specialty drink menu.

(My great nephew and niece stuck a cute turkey head they made on it, that I just now noticed!)

Here are my sous chefs for 2018, without whom this would not be possible. They come the day before and that is when the major cooking begins. Thanksgiving morning they are with me and we get right to work. My great-nephew Aaron, (the small guy in front) and my great-niece Jenna (who was not in the mood to have her picture taken) love to come and help. They do all the juicing for the bar. 

 

She sure looks happy here!

Even making the pigs in a blanket are taken very seriously! Only kidding, they have a great time making them.

I purchase tee-shirts for everyone who attends that has the logo of the charity on it. My friend and I have so much fun designing it every year. Of course, there is the yearly picture taken of everyone wearing it. It has become a great tradition and all of our friends look forward to seeing it on Facebook. Even Mazel got in on the merriment this year!

As always the night had to end. 

We are already looking forward to next year.

It’s that simple! (uh, not really!)