Countdown to Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving is 4 days away, but I’ve been planning and preparing for Turkey Day for the past month. This year we will be hosting Thanksgiving since we have the space for our families and friends. For the purposes of sharing how I’m planning my Thanksgiving, I’ll be posting my preparations and entertaining tips.Over the weekend, I was busy with a few events… however once everyone left our Pre-Thanksgiving party on Saturday. I immediately started setting up for Thanksgiving. Every spare moment I had was devoted in setting up my “food stations” within the living room, foyer and dining room. I also highlighted the color of cranberry in my food presentations. This is the color theme for our Thanksgiving, and also one of my favorite colors of fall. You’ll also notice in the following pictures that there are post-it notes strewn around. These post-it notes indicate what foods will be served in each serving piece. With the amount of food Thanksgiving usually involves, it’s best to ensure you have enough serving pieces on hand!

I’m expecting 30+ people coming over for Thanksgiving throughout the day. We’re starting our celebration with appetizers and cocktails at 2:30pm. To whet everyone’s appetite, our living room has been set up with a few food stations strictly for appetizers and snacks.Here is the hot buffet table that will hold a majority of our hot appetizers. The table is actually the cover to our living room heater and the heat from it will help keep the foods warm. I find tiered serving pieces to be a wonderful way to present a large offering of food without taking much tablespace. For some added festive color, I’ll be placing a cranberry bow on each tier rack and have 2 candle holders to add a nice glow as the evening moves on.Across from the hot buffet table and behind our couch, I’ve set up 2 card tables to hold our cold appetizers. Instead of tiered serving pieces, I’m using ceramic pieces set in woven baskets. The baskets make it look presentable as well as easy to carry food from the kitchen to table. For some added festive color, I’ve placed a few tealights and a glass bowl with a cranberry floral piece.
Off to another corner of the living room, I’ve set up a hot beverage table. Here, I have my crockpot to keep my mulled apple cider warm, 2 coffee pots (for coffee & hot water), a few teabags, hot chocolate packets, condiments and foam cups.In our foyer, I’ve set up a beverage cart that includes several bottles of soda, wines/champagnes, glassware, ice bucket/tongs and a punchbowl for the holiday punch I’m making.
Now here’s our dining room and the preparations I’ve made. I’m serving up a split menu of traditional Thanksgiving fare and Asian fare. To make things a little easier for our guests who may have food preferences, I’ve split our table to offer asian fare on one side and traditional fare on the other side of the table. Additionally, I’ve places the dry pantry ingredients needed for the dishes in the actual serving piece, along with some premeasured ingredients. I’ve also included a list of refrigerated ingredients on the back of each post it for those dishes. Having my ingredients prepped in advance with the serving dish it will be placed in saves me a lot of time and stress. The last thing I need is to be in the kitchen scrambling while I have a few things cooking on the stovetop and oven! You can see that cranberry is all over this table… and for my centerpiece, I’ll be creating a floral bouquet with fresh cranberries as my base.On my side table, I’ll be placing the desserts. Initially, I planned on serving a pumpkin cheesecake, however after all the food offerings, I wanted the desserts to be more bite-sized. For this, these small squares will be perfect for my pumpkin cheesecake truffles and mini pecan tarts. I did include space for my apple pie since it’s not Thanksgiving without it!

So now that I’ve shared my “layout” for Thanksgiving, I’ll be posting some of my food prepartions and recipes…