28 days till Christmas....

..... and our big tree is in the house. My husband went out early this morning to look for fresh trees, and he came back with one that's nearly ten feet tall. Gorgeous tree, a perfectly shaped Noble Fir, sitting to the left of our fireplace so it can be seen through the front door of the house.

The day after Thanksgiving has always been The Big Tree Day around here. While nearly everyone else is shopping till they drop at the malls, we're ooohing and aaahing at our big tree.
Mickey Kitty was the first to inspect it, and AngelBoy was the first to drink the water out of the pan underneath the tree. The cats love when the real tree comes into the house... it's as if the tree is a gift just for them. Hopefully, they will all just look at the tree and not touch it from now till the day we take it down and carry it to the curb.

And that day will be here in a heart-beat... the month of December always seems to disappear more quickly than any other month of the year. And that's exactly the reason why I decorate the house so early... we truly enjoy having the house filled with trees and Santas and angels. Christmas comes and goes so quickly, so that's just my way of making it last longer than it really does.

Thanksgiving dinner yesterday was perfectly fine. Just five of us this year, since C & R have moved to upstate NY, and K & B are in Guatemala this week. Even with five, it still takes time for all the extra little details to make the table look special. "Dressing the table" is more fun than preparing the food, in my opinion-- but as my husband says, you can't eat the decorations. (But a pretty table surely adds something to the holiday.)

I filled the inside of the turkey with a large sprig of rosemary and an apple cut into halves, as I've done for the past few years-- it makes the kitchen smell wonderful, and keeps the turkey moist and very flavorful. And I'm not a big fan of turkey meat, but the apple and the rosemary really make the meat extra delicious.

My husband made oyster dressing and his famous cheese-y mashed potatoes. We used a cake pan to bake the dressing in-- a turkey-shaped cake pan that our friend V gave to us before Halloween. V thought we'd use it to make a turkey-shaped cake for Thanksgiving, but my husband had the idea of baking the dressing in that pan, and it worked perfectly. The oyster dressing came out of the cake pan shaped like a turkey. It looked so wonderful that no one wanted to be the first one to slice it. We all quickly got over that.

C's mom made her cranberry-apple compote, plus a spinach and feta casserole. Our neighbor S made homemade pumpkin pie and whipped cream, and a baking dish filled with candied sweet potatoes. Just for the five of us, we had way too much food, but I sent everyone home with some left-overs. We still have enough turkey and vegetables left in the fridge so I won't have to be cooking for the rest of the week.

Which is just fine with me, because we'll be decorating this big tree for the next few days. The tree is so full and so tall that our neighbor had to help my husband take it down from the roof of the car and carry it into the house. When B came into the living room, he looked around and saw some of my smaller trees and said "But you already have Christmas trees in here!" B is such an amateur when it comes to Christmas.