here come the holidays

It's been a lovely, long weekend around here. My mom hosted Thanksgiving dinner and this year it was us, my sister and her family, our cousin, Greg, and my mom's neighbor-friend who otherwise would've been alone that day.

Brian and Greg had the honors of carving the turkey and ham.

I tried to get a selfie with Tim, but he wouldn't have any of that. Instead, I got a photo of lots of hair. ;-)

As always, we were blessed with an abundance of delicious food. We had turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, homemade rolls, stuffing, and veggies (I made a corn casserole, green beans with gremolata, and roasted carrots and parsnips with honey and fresh thyme. They got a little burned when rewarming them in my mom's oven, but no one seemed to mind). Mom also made a layered Greek dip as an appetizer and two homemade pies ~ french silk chocolate and pumpkin.

It was a low-key few hours of good conversation and laughter ~ what family and friends are all about.

 No Black Friday shopping for us the next day. We chose to browse a few little antique shops about 20 minutes north of us. Low-key, no crowds, no mass merchandise. My kind of shopping. (Besides online shopping.)

See the set of four wooden Santas towards the front bottom right of the table? They are vintage wooden bells ~ and they came home with me. 

The only other thing I bought was a 9 ft long vintage garland made of red and green wooden beads.

We tried going to the lighting of the Woodstock Square last night. This is where the movie, Groundhog Day was filmed. It's a beautiful, small town in our County, just 1/2 hour from our house. Little did we know this once-small, neighborhood event has now turned into a commercialized frenzy of thousands of people due to social media. We looked for a parking space for about 25 minutes, driving blocks away, to no avail. There were throngs of people walking everywhere and crossing streets in the dark...it was just nuts. We gave up and went home.

(Google images)

We ended up watching several episodes of The Kominsky Method on Netflix last night. We loved it! Great acting with Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin, with a lot of laugh out loud moments. Can't wait to watch more tonight. Too bad there's only eight episodes.

We are due for a whopper of a storm tomorrow. Depending on how it tracks, we could get as much as 8-14" of wet, heavy snow ~ what they call "heart attack snow". And winds will be whipping at 45 mph. They are saying with the wet, heavy snow being on power lines and the high winds, a lot of people could lose power. The contractors that are working on building our new front porch/little deck are supposed to be back on Monday to finish up. They said before they even started the project that they work in the snow, so we'll see. Sneak peek...porch demolition.

Obviously, we're staying home tomorrow. We didn't have any plans, anyway. I think it will be a good day to dig out the Christmas decor and start decorating, though it will be minimal. I swear, it seems like I just packed all this stuff up and put it away. Doesn't it seem like Christmas comes quicker every year as you get older?

Here we go...