Happy bi-week! I think that’s a football term for an off-week which is pretty much what this week is right? The week between Thanksgiving and December. AKA time to shop til you drop, get all of your Christmas decorations up and get so sick of leftover turkey sandwiches that you vow not to eat it again for another year, or at least until Christmas.

For once my family avoided turkey overload and didn’t eat a single leftover. Why you may ask?

This guy….

My parents and sister both own small dogs and therefore aren’t accustomed to “counter surfing”. Unfortunately for Renly, his efforts proved to be for naught and he didn’t actually consume any leftover turkey either.

Robert, Renly and I traveled to Tennessee for Thanksgiving this year. My grandparents were also attending and it was our last trip before baby (hallelujah because riding in the car for long periods of time is getting less comfortable for me by the day). After we ate our Thanksgiving meal at my parents house we went over to a friends home to visit and have dessert. Upon returning we discovered that my mother had inadvertently left the lid off of the tupper-wear container she had put the leftover turkey in. She also left it sitting too close to the edge of the counter. The tupper-wear container was now flipped over onto the ground and pushed into the corner of the cabinets. I didn’t take a picture at the time but it looked something like this…

My theory is that Renly, at the urging of the little dogs no doubt, flipped the open container onto the floor with his head and it landed perfectly upside down, with all of the turkey still trapped inside. They then probably all took turns pushing it around the floor, trying to get to the meat inside until they pushed it into the corner and it became stuck.

Turkey that has been used to sweep the kitchen floor isn’t high on my list of things I’m willing to consume so thus, no leftover turkey for any of us…or the dogs, although it is likely that my father the notorious dog feeder snuck them some without my knowledge.

The rest of our Thanksgiving was lovely; we did lots of relaxing, watched a few movies, I got all of my Christmas shopping done (hooray), spent wonderful time with family and friends

and to cap it all off my sister threw me an adorable baby shower!

I have to admit when the idea of a baby shower over Thanksgiving first got tossed around I wasn’t too keen on it for several reasons. It was a holiday weekend, most of my friends no longer live in TN and more than anything else I had a difficult letting other people celebrate this pregnancy, especially in the beginning. Initially, I worried so much that something would happen to this baby too that I didn’t want to plan celebrations that may never get to take place, or even talk much about the pregnancy. 8 months in and we still haven’t done any sort of announcement on social media. Emotions about a new pregnancy following a lost one are definitely complicated.

I protested the shower and finally my mother quite firmly told me that I needed to let other people love and celebrate this baby. Mom’s aren’t always right, but they often are.

I finally agreed and I’m very glad I did. As I’ve often discovered, the things you fight against the hardest turn out so much better than you hoped if you just embrace them. It’s so much easier to forgive than to hold a grudge, to include rather than exclude and to let people in instead of keep them out. The shower was very thoughtful and detailed and beautiful, and the attendance and extremely generous gifts made me feel quite overwhelmed with love and gratitude. I mean check out these beautiful elephant paintings from a good family friend..the sweetest!

My sister truly outdid herself, the first of many times to come as a new aunt I am sure.

We returned to SC with a car full of baby gear and very full hearts. We also came home to a “fall” house that needed to turn into a “Christmas” house.

Robert moved all of the boxes down from the attic and I’ve been busy taking down and putting up over the last few days. I don’t have tons of fall decor, but I do always buy at least a pumpkin or two (or three!). This year they were three heirloom pumpkins that were so ugly they were cute.

I don’t know when I made the transition to hunting for the most perfectly round pumpkin in the patch to being drawn to the lumpiest I could find but somewhere along the way it happened.

I am a big proponent of “waste not, want not” especially when it comes to edibles, so I decided that since none of my pumpkins had even begun to rot, and none went with any of my Christmas decor, I simply could not throw them away. Thus, time to cook them up!

I decided to make my own pumpkin puree out of my decorative pumpkins. It’s extremely easy to do…all you need is a knife, an oven and a food processor or blender.

Now the question becomes what to do with ALL that pumpkin puree? My current plan is trying my hand at homemade pumpkin gnocchi, and pumpkin bread and cookies to give my neighbors as an early holiday treat.

Hope you can use this recipe to re-purpose your fall decor. And if you’re totally over pumpkin for the time being, it should stay good in your freezer for several months! Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Homemade Roasted Pumpkin Puree

Ingredients:

1 Pumpkin (any sort other than a carving pumpkin should do)

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Use a large knife to slice pumpkin into halves (or thirds or quarters if it is especially large).
3. Scoop out seeds and fibers and sprinkle cut halves with salt and pepper.
4. Place cut side down on a foil lined pan with tall sides (Your pumpkin will lose a lot of moisture!). Roast for 45 minutes or until done and soft all over.
5. Once cooled, scoop out flesh from shell and process in a food processor or blender until smooth. Keep in an airtight container in your fridge for a week or freeze for several months.