That is what I had for lunch. It was a Thanksgiving leftover binge of truly epic proportions.

I will be hiding from my scale for a few days…and my skinny jeans.

Our first Thanksgiving in our new house was a resounding success. I actually managed to seat and feed all 18 people in our crowd, which was my primary goal this year. In our old house, we were desperately short on space, so a few people often had to sit on the floor in the living room…I know, classy, huh?

But not this year:

  

  

I did have to use some kids’ tables:

  

But, everyone had a real seat at a real table. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would get this excited about Thanksgiving seating, I would have told you to quit eating the crazy flakes. Oh, how things change…

Ever wondered how much gravy you need for 18 people?

  

The answer is a lot.

Among other things, we had Cheesecake-Pecan Pie:

   

Pumpkin-Caramel-Toffee Pie:

  

Pumpkin Rum Cake:

 Mom’s Pumpkin Pie:

  

as well as Chocolate Pie, Strawberry Pie and Blueberry-Banana Pie. I don’t have a picture of these, because my refrigerator was protesting the constant opening-and-closing, and began to give me the warning beep that the temperature was rising too high. Dang nagging refrigerator…

Overall, the only real surprise was the fact that the turkey was done a full hour and a half before it should have been. I’m still scratching my head over that one, but we made it work.

Unfortunately, I was so busy cooking that I got very few pictures of the food, or the people. I may need to train my husband in using the camera, because I never seem to get many pictures of the events we host. Between cooking , cleaning, and dealing with the aftermath:

  

My camera sometimes gets forgotten. Thank goodness my mother-in-law washed 90% of the dishes, or we would still be buried in a mess.

Now, we move on to the Christmas decorating:

  

That is, after I digest all this:

  

Maybe the decorating can wait until tomorrow…