Thanksgiving Countdown ~

Ok gals, have you checked your calendars recently? Do you realize that Thanksgiving is...listen up!....Do you realize Thanksgiving is only TWO weeks away?

Maybe you all are a little ahead of the ballgame on this one, but I've been moseying along, doing housework, doing the blog thing, keeping up with the kids and it just HIT ME!

THANKSGIVING IS ONLY TWO WEEKS AWAY!

And guess what? I have up to ELEVEN additional people coming to my house for dinner! That makes a possibility of EIGHTEEN people having Thanksgiving dinner at MY house!

HOLY COW! By now I have usually created my menu, made my master ingredient list, made dish assignments (this is where I assign baking dishes and serving dishes to everything so I know how many disposable items I need to buy) and started stockpiling what I need. As well as having a game plan for how I'm going to put everything together and still enjoy myself.

This year? I just finalized my menu last night and stayed up a bit late getting the ingredients list down. Luckily, because I stockpile all year, I have some of the items I will need already on hand but not as many as I would like this late in the game. I am thankful that I'm pretty much stocked up on paper goods and beverages so I'll mainly be able to concentrate on the food from here on.

What's on the menu?

Turkey (of course) and Spiral Ham
Stuffing (I don't do homemade)
Mashed Potatoes (I'm gonna try freezer potatoes this year and while I'm at it I'm gonna make a triple batch so I'll have some to use in the coming months.)
Gravy
Sweet Pototo Pie
Tossed Salad
Green Bean Casserole
Corn
Rolls

Pumpkin Pie
Pecan Pie
4-Layer Dessert
Oatmeal Scotchies
Peanut Butter Thumb Prints
French Apple Cobbler
Rice Krispie Treats
Lemon Cream Cheese Cake
Four Layer Pumpkin Cake

As you can tell, we are nuts about dessert. We don't really do dessert much throughout the year so the holidays are always overloaded. We eat dessert after dinner, for an afternoon snack and then for a midnight snack. And of course everyone likes to have left overs the next day!

I'm going to try to get some of the recipes I'm using posted in the next week or so.

You can view my master shopping list here.

I'll be updating it weekly (and sometimes more) to reflect my costs. In the end we'll review the cost of serving 18 people Thanksgiving dinner.

What's on your menu??