I'm Going To Be Picked On For This...

;-)

Last year at Thanksgiving, my Dad walked into the kitchen and found my stack of serving dishes with post-it notes in them. There was no end to the ribbing for that one. I had wanted to make sure I had enough serving dishes, and I also didn't want to forget anything that had to go on the table. It was funny, it gave Dad something to laugh about and pick on me for. So this year I decided to ramp up the persnickety-ness and take it a step further.

Last night I completely set the table for Thursday's Dinner. Well, almost. When I opened up my table completely, I found I didn't have a tablecloth to fit. A call in to Mom fixed that and I'll pick that up later on today. But I wanted to set the table for a couple of reasons. One being that I wanted a visual of how many people we were having, and I did need to know how far we were going to have to open the table. It has two leaves, and using both of them fills the whole room end to end. I did end up putting in both leaves, but it gives everyone plenty of room. If we needed to we could squish in a few more, but as it is it's perfect. I had to stretch the table corner to corner, and it made for a tight squeeze on one end, but by setting a bench in that spot, and checking to see if the kids would be okay there, I managed to ease my thoughts about dinner and where we'd all sit.

I also wanted to check on the serving dishes. I knew I had enough but I also wanted to see if they would all fit on the table. Last year we had to put three dishes on the counter behind us. That made for awkward passing, and with a new table this year, I wanted to check it out. Everything fit perfectly. Each dish got a label, so nothing was forgotten, and I even managed two platters for turkey. Then I rearranged so that all the green veggies weren't together at one end, and all the potatoes weren't together. I think it looked rather nice. I also learned that my wine glasses need to be washed, so I'm very glad I got them out as well.
Overall, it was exciting to see it all set up! I wanted to just leave it up until Thursday! It looked so festive and ready for a party. But since my house is small and cozy, that was a bad idea if I wanted my wine glasses to be intact come Thursday. I also found out exactly how many chairs we need to round up from somewhere. Unless we get surprise company...

So with that, I have work to do. Now I need to figure out where I'm going to put six pies, and I have a few things that I can get done today, not to mention some cleaning. I hope everyone out there's having as great of a week as I am! Abigail has off the rest of the week, and her and Zander are just loving spending time together already. Knock on wood that that keeps up today!