Let the Madness Begin!

Today is the beginning of my Thanksgiving madness.  Aside from my spreadsheet and lists, of course.  :-)

I will be shopping for all the groceries (minus the strawberries because I want them fresh) this afternoon.  Not only will I be picking up the Thanksgiving groceries, but everything else we need as well.  This is likely to be the highest grocery bill I have ever seen.  But you know what?  I'm ready.  I say Bring.It.On.  I'm going to be trying a couple of new dessert recipes that I'm really excited about.  Bite sized s'mores from the oven will be the best, I think.  It's a pampered chef recipe that I hope is as easy as it sounds.  I am also going to make some no bake cookies...chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal....mmmmm.

I know that everyone will be food shopping this weekend so I'm hoping to miss some of it by going this afternoon.  Wish me luck on that one.

The other madness this weekend will be Christmas tree hunting and decoration hunting.  Since we will be decorating next weekend we really need to find a tree.  We need a slim, pre-lit tree because our living room is a little narrow.  Something we didn't anticipate when building the house.  There was an option of a more bumped out space but we figured it was big enough.  We didn't think about a tree needing to take up residence for a month.  Anyway, I digress.  We want a tree with multi colored lights and lots of them.  Not so easy to find.  We found one that we liked but it was only clear lights.  That might end up being the one we get but hopefully not.  I saw one at Michael's last weekend but BJ wasn't with me to give me his thoughts so we are going back together.  It was on sale and I'm hoping it is again.  We still need some decorations for the house and the outside but are having a hard time deciding what we want to do.  I think this year and probably next year will be a learning experience for us in decorating and figuring out our tastes, so to speak.  We have also decided that we need to seal the grout in our kitchen.  So on top of my usual Saturday morning cleaning routine, we will be making the house smell terrible with sealer before we head out for the day.  Fun, no?

Sunday will be a day of football and that's a good thing because that means we probably won't go anywhere.  I'm sure after all the running around Saturday we will be happy to sit our butts on the couch and chill.

Monday will be a crazy day at work because I will be trying to finish up anything that is pending since I will only be in a 1/2 day Tuesday and then gone the rest of the week.  Crazy things always happen when I'm prepping to be out, why is that?  The crazy work stuff will carry into Tuesday, I'm sure and then the real fun begins!

The Little Guy's mother is dropping him off to me Wednesday morning.  We will be getting his hair trimmed so he looks nice for all the pictures I will be taking and then we are cleaning (mostly me) prepping and baking to get ready for Thursday.  Here is the list of things I will be making on Wednesday:

• Prepping the turkey which includes stuffing it (and that means making stuffing).  I will do this late Wednesday
• Deviled eggs - sure to make the fridge smell great overnight!
• The crust for my apple pie - I'm going to wrap it up and take it out Thursday morning when I actually make the pie.
• Chocolate trifle - this includes a chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, (light) cool whip and heath bar pieces...to die for.
• ranch dip - packet of seasoning and sour cream
• onion dip - lipton onion soup mix and sour cream
• fruit dip - blueberry yogurt and (light) cool whip - yummy with just about any kind of berry
• oatmeal cookies - from above
• mini s'mores - also from above

Pretty ambitious, huh?  Most of it is pretty simple but can be very time consuming.  The Little Guy will love helping with the trifle, oatmeal cookies and the mini s'mores.  And if he'd rather stay on the easy side of things, I'll just have him mix the dips for me.

And to top this off, it's time for our year in review on our house.  Our kitchen sink is leaking sporadically so we are having the plumber come out...on WEDNESDAY of all days.  Hopefully most of the stuff will be done by the time he gets there and hopefully he's not there very long.  I needs my sink whilst I be's cookin'.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.  I'm hoping to be able to update Monday about our shopping excursions this weekend.   I have a few blogs I'm reading that I hope get some very happy news soon!