hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving! this year, our neighbors nancy and ed invited us to join them for turkey, so we did. i made 2 pies, traditional pumpkin and of course my chocolate pecan, and i also made homemade brandied whipped cream. YUM!! i was a little nervous about the pumpkin, since it was my first time making pumpkin pie, but i had complete faith in cook's illustrated and it turned out wonderful! i didn't have any ceramic pie weights for the crust, so i used some decorative rock. haha...worked great! the whipped cream was the perfect finishing touch for both pies. i thought i would have to make a second chocolate pecan pie just so we could have leftovers, but N let us take the rest of the pies home with us. :D

the dinner conversation was actually quite fun, especially considering we didn't know any of their guests. ed's parents were there from buffalo, NY, as well as N&E's 2 kids (daughter is a very friendly and talkative freshman at CU, university of colorado, and son is a very anti-social freshman in high school). then there was N's friend originally from ireland. she talked a lot about drinking...go figure. hahaha...and she made delicious (but strong, well, for me) irish coffees after dinner. and there was carrie and christ (yes, christ, pronounced with a soft "ih") from akron, OH, friends of N&E's when they lived in tampa. so the 11 of us ate a lot, laughed a lot, and ate a lot. some other neighbors also came by after their dinner, and we ate and laughed some more. all in all, it was a fun time.

the only downside to not cooking your own thanksgiving dinner is having no leftovers! but luckily our friends C&C invited us to leftover turkey and game night last night, and so we got our turkey leftover fix (as well as her mom's green spaghetti! so yummy!), and played sequence and battle of the sexes (those questions are pretty lame).

so now that thanksgiving is done and over, it's time to start decorating for christmas. ugh...not looking forward to it. i don't know what's wrong with me these days...i seem to be in sort of a funk. hopefully i get over it soon, cuz i don't want to be a scrooge!