Wrong cookie, seasoned meat and Christmas squee

This weekend was exhausting.  Well, not Saturday more Sunday.

Saturday we got Chinese food for the first time in ages and I got this fortune.

I was highly irritated with this.  If I'd not had another cookie to forage the fortune from I would've felt like driving to the fortune cookie company, punching the fortune guy square in the gonads and leaving.

Because we're only having one turkey and one ham this year, that will mean no turkey leftovers for us so I cooked one up yesterday.

Hello lover.

Need a closer peek?

See, that's why I love to do the turkey with an herb butter assault before roasting.  No basting and it's already seasoned when it comes out.  Click here for the directions on how to serve this deliciousness to your family Thursday.

This year I decided to make my own turkey stock.  So I got the carcass, neck, some old veggies, the middle of the new celery, bay leaves and peppercorns and chucked it all in a pot for 4 hours.  I drained all the chunks and now it's in the fridge waiting to have the fat skimmed off before going into the freezer.  Well one will be going into the dressing Thursday but the rest will be used for a test batch of Grandma's noodles.

I was bummed that we weren't in Memphis to see the treelighting this year like we were a few years ago, especially after I saw Deacon from Nashville was the special guest.  I watched it though and if you're interested in seeing him do a little concert, click here and watch the festivities!

I wanted the Christmas tree up come hell or high water and I just didn't have much energy to deal with it.  Can't I just hire a couple of those elves on shelves or whatever the hell they are and they'll do it for me overnight without raiding my medicine cabinet and judging how long it's been since I cleaned my baseboards?  I had a lot of food prep to get done this weekend for a football spread we're doing next weekend.  I wanted to get as much done ahead of time as I could so I'm not a twitching ball of hell before our guest gets here.  Of course I'm going overboard but I so rarely get a chance to flex my entertaining gene and for a foodie whose been to top rated restaurants no less so it's a good excuse to go a little more extravagant than usual.  After doing all of that, I knew we had to workout or time would get away from us.  We did strength and yoga and I burned 585 calories then we had some turkey sliders and mashed potatoes for dinner.  (I know, I'm totally going to ruin our appetite for Thanksgiving.)

I eeked out the last bit of energy I had to get the tree up while listening to my childhood Christmas favorites.  I think it looks pretty good...

I've still got a lot of stuff to get done over the next few days but now that I can come down and plug in the tree, anything will feel more cheery because of it!  Exploding with Christmas squee!!  (A big shout out to the Mr for all of his help!)

What did you do this weekend?  Out of curiosity, how much are turkeys in your neck of the woods per pound?

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