Thanksgiving Prep

Sing it with me now! Pass the cranberry sauce, we're having mashed potatoes! 

It's almost Turkey Day! 

You may recall me mentioning, perhaps in passing, maybe even in multiple posts - this year The Boswell House will host Thanksgiving! Now when I say that, I mean, literally, the house. You see, we the Boswells residing in the Boswell House - won't be doing any cooking. You heard me correctly! (Or would that be read me?) No cooking! Okay, wait, there will be cooking but, it's that Dylan and I won't be - let me start over. You see, Dylan in all of his culinary mastery, comes from chefs. His mom and his older sister taught him everything he knows. They're all AMAZING cooks. So, as logic would have it, we're just giving up the oven and enjoying the family time. 

Since Dylan has family in both California and Texas, meeting in the middle this year made sense. We're thrilled, because as the mutlys continue growing older, leaving the house for overnight trips can cause some serious anxiety. Not only that, we love our house! This house that's been IN the Boswell Family since the day it was built! Dylan's older sister used to live there too, it's this fantastic Thanksgiving homecoming! 

While Dylan and I may not be actually cooking (well, something tells me Dylan might) there's more tradition to indulge in, like all the planning and preparation. How did we partake in the planning and prepping? The house of course! 

We'll start with the outside - because the Boswell House was in need of a paint job. Why not take care of it in time for the family to be here for Thanksgiving?!

Gaze upon the before:

Followed by the glorious after!!!

A little greener in parts, a little darker in others. We absolutely LOVE IT!!!

Next in line: The Kitchen

We decided it was high time we finally got around to addressing the "we need new pans" situation. Our guests will be coming over and cooking. If there was ever a time to get some new cookware ... 

Lovely new pans shed some light on the fact that the entire freaking kitchen needed a serious once-over.  And, away we went!

I don't have before photos (not exactly proud of some of them ...) but I do have more glorious afters!

oooooooooooooh!! So shiny and clean!!!

Next up: the innards! 

Again, no befores but I gotta say, these after photos speak for themselves.

Just enjoy this for a minute with me. Items, items we need access to, in locations that are easy to gain access to! With space around them! Not shoved, not dangerously piled atop one another - just there. Confident, waiting for their showtime. 

Gaze upon the glory of the bi-annual reorganization of the Tupperware cabinet! We love you when you function like this, cabinet. And look! There's even room for pitchers and the salad spinner! *happy sigh*

There they are, shiny and brand spanking new! We need this from one more angle, don't you think?

Oh how I love thee Thanksgiving cookware. And thee other thee, clean and organized cabinet! 

To create some of the space we generated in the kitchen - it was finally time to fill up our new furniture! That lovely cabinet over by the dining table. 

Here we have: The Holiday Zone. 

All the little things that we won't use on a regular basis, but still want around, and not shoved up into the attic either. It's the best of both worlds, really. I even think that once Thanksgiving is over, our fancy chargers and plain white table cloths will go in there with zero issue! 

How fantastic are these cooking zone preparations?! 

I even cleaned the oven. AGAIN! 

Like, that happened pretty recently and now, it's clean once more! WHOO HOO!!!

Alright, moving on, we still have the rest of the house to get to!

I bring you, the guest room! (Which will house an actual guest this Thanksgiving!)

The first thing we did was have the carpet cleaned, so reinstalling the mirror is part of the accomplishments, it got a photograph. Also, you can see our nifty little boat shelf on the top left there. We found him on our trip to Jerome in July!

Gave us a nice little housing for some of our collectibles. 

(Yes, I know the picture is fuzzy. But you get the gist.)

We did a little rearranging here, you see, we used to have one of the CD cabinets in the guest room.

It moved, now both of them are in the office and I gotta say, they look pretty slick together.

Where the CD cabinet used to reside in the guest room, now we have one of the bookshelves that was booted from the dining room!

Perfect for storing more of all of our little things!

Yes, I love Garfield, okay?

Now when our guest arrives, all we have to do is fold up the treadmill and pop up the air mattress. VIOLA!

The guest bathroom also needed some assistance, you see, in the midst of Arnie's many battles with UTIs we dubbed the guest bathroom's shower as a location for a cat box. It was great, the dogs couldn't get in there, the cats could, it was all easy to clean - but. It did sort of eliminate the ability to shower in that bathroom. Well, if you have a guest, they'll probably want to take a shower right? So, we hit the internet for some solutions to the fact that our dogs like to *ahem* eat out of the catbox. 

We found this gem!

It has 2 little doors that only the kitties can get into, and no dog would be able to snake around to get into that cat box, not only that, lifting the top is actually pretty difficult so that's a human-only operation. Bonus points? It really does look nice!

Then we moved out attention to sprucing up the dining room, just a little bit more!

Black is back, baby!

(hah! I'm so clever.)

Ah, so lovely! In fact, now we have a frame for our caricature up there. The sprucing just continues to continue! 

What else screams Thanksgiving? 

Ooh, I know! Cooking! 

Dylan had a big pot luck at his office this year, and he signed up to make shepherd's pie. Then he shopped for ingredients and thought, well, if I'm going to make one, I may as well make two. Also, we learned something new about these meat-pies. If you use lamb, it's a shepherd's pie. We didn't have lamb, we had beef. Do you know what that makes it? A cottage pie.

The more you know. 

Truth is: meat with a mashed potato hat all baked up with cheese on top is delicious no matter which animal you'll be consuming. 

How lovely is that?!

Next up: Potato hat.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

Then, everyone went into two massive pans!

Popped into the oven to bake for a while and:

TWO OF THEM! 

One for coworkers, one for home. We ate on that cottage pie for days and I can tell you this much, it's the kind of leftovers that just get better and better as the days pass!

Now, are there a ton of Thanksgiving prep details I've missed? Yes.

Do I wish I was able to chronicle all of it? You betcha. 

But ain't that the holidays? Time is limited and goes by fast, what matters is stopping to enjoy the bits you can and savoring all of those delicious memories ..... okay and delicious meals. 

I can't wait to come back and regale you all with post-thanksgiving!

See you then!