jason and i had friends over on saturday for a thanksgiving feast. it was amazing. i made the turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, stuffing and rolls. our delightful guests brought a multitude of other delicious treats to share.

on friday night, i decided to pull our turkey out of the brine and prep it for roasting the next day.

i can’t even begin to tell you how much this step grossed me out. it probably didn’t help that i had no idea what i was doing. i mean, i was certainly trying to massage rosemary and butter evenly into and under the skin of this bird. but. it was so gross. i wasn’t properly mentally prepared. and i was so exhausted afterwards.

next time i’ll know better, maybe. hopefully.

despite my momentary desire to become a vegetarian, i pushed on the next morning with anne burrell’s pan gravy recipe.

4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 ribs celery, cut into ½-inch dice
2 large onions, cut into ½-inch dice
1 large celery root, cut into ½-inch dice
1 bulb fennel, cut into ½-inch dice
5 bay leaves
4 sprigs fresh sage, tied in a bundle
1 bundle fresh thyme
Kosher salt
1 quart chicken stock, plus more if needed
1/2 bottle dry white wine

Place the garlic, celery, onions, celery root, fennel, bay leaves, sage and thyme in a roasting pan and season with salt. Put the chicken stock and wine in the bottom of the roasting pan and place the turkey on top.

To finish the gravy (after the bird is finished roasting and removed from the roasting pan after resting for at least a half hour): Remove the bay leaves, sage and thyme and from the roasting pan. Using an immersion blender, blend the veggies together until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.

that gravy was so delicious — and simple! i will definitely use this recipe again.

i made the stuffing in the crock pot to conserve room in the oven, but it didn’t work out as well as i had hoped. it was lovely to prepare, though. so many colors!

jason entertained our guests while i freaked out about everything in the kitchen. if you didn’t know this about me: i am good at worrying. and being a touch too o.c.d. about things.

hannie was the first to try out the rolls i baked. she approved, though i thought they probably would’ve been better served the day of baking (i made them late in the afternoon on friday).

my first turkey was gorgeous. and delicious. and totally worth the trouble! i was so proud. (i still am.)

jason did the honor of carving, of course.

jared helped carve the ham.

seriously can’t get over how easy and delicious this gravy was. it’s too bad our leftovers slipped out of my hand this morning and exploded all over the kitchen floor. i am so sad, but i guess i’ll just have to make it again.

clockwise, from the top: garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows.

kristi was the first to sit down and enjoy a full plate.

crystal’s corn casserole arrived a little after we had started eating, but it disappeared almost immediately.

dave brought us some very pretty flowers, which was a nice addition to the giant pile of food we already had.

after dinner, we watched “thanks killing,” a terrible b-movie about a homicidal turkey. a holiday classic, i’m sure.

then we played rock band, as per usual.

this is the only photo of me (from my camera) from the day, because what’s not pictured is me fretting all day long, washing every dish a couple of times, and not willing to sit down longer than a few minutes. luckily, everything went off without a hitch and we all had a great afternoon together.

last wednesday, we invited over some friends to play rock band. jason was so excited, i think he downloaded at least 30 new songs that afternoon.

we had six instruments hooked up — guitar, bass, drums, keys, and two microphones. we would’ve had seven, but we would need to get one more microphone. not that it mattered, actually. it seemed like everyone who wasn’t holding an instrument was singing along with most of the songs anyway!

check out laura in this photo — she’s playing some sweet air guitar!

i don’t remember how it came up, but vani remembered every word and every handclap for down down baby.

crystal brought us an adorable halloween plant, too. it didn’t have a nametag, though — any one know what kind of succulent this is?

molly and ryan brought a really dangerous (read: delicious) buffalo/cheese dip.

vani brought a bunch of tiny cupcakes!

the bacon table: bacon/cheese crackers, bacon cheeseball, bacon chocolate, and bacon dip.

jess also made chocolate chip cookies. (jess: you are welcome to bake here anytime!)

as a somewhat informal tradition, we took a group photo. (yay, i got to be in one of my photos!) unfortunately, we missed taking the photo before dave left for another event, so we’ll need to take another photo at another get-together. what a shame.

Jason and I drove down to his family’s home in Iowa the day before New Year’s Eve for more holiday celebrations. It was crazy foggy most of the way down interstate 35 until we hit Ames – then the clouds parted and the weather was just lovely.

There was no snow in central Iowa. We should’ve brought some of ours down and shared…

Since the weather conveniently cleared up, we stopped for dinner at HuHot just north of Des Moines. (My parents gave me a gift certificate for Christmas) (Mom, Jason really liked it!) (We don’t have HuHot in the Twin Cities, we have Khan’s.) Afterwards, we continued on and arrived at Uncle Fred and Aunt Renee’s house around 8:30 or so. It was a pretty quiet night.

The next night was New Year’s Eve, of course. I was wrapping up Project 365, so I spent some time taking photos of the Christmas tree and Nikki reminisced about some of the ornaments. Afterwards we all tried to stay awake for the ball drop in New York. There was even some dancing.

I was happy to be spending a second, happy New Year’s Eve with such a sweet man. And his family. Which may be why I got a little shy when he kissed me at “midnight” (11 p.m. central time, 12 a.m. eastern).

The next day, we celebrated Christmas with the whole gang! And once again, I was stunned by their generosity and general wonderfulness. They sure know how to make a gal feel welcome!

It was Jaxon’s first Christmas! (and he had his first birthday on the 6th!)

Nicholas even wrapped special gifts for everyone – nursery rhyme books, coloring books, etc. It’s pretty adorable to see kids get into the giving spirit. He was begging Jason and me to open his gifts for us since the moment we arrived.

I opened the brown paper bag first.

Off to a good start – both of these wines were from vineyards in Iowa!

I gotta start telling Jason’s family about other things I like… though these are awesome gifts! I’m really enjoying the goblets, but I think I need to start exercising some more restraint when pouring wine into them.

It’s nice that Jason was there to take some photos of me, too. (Some of the photos in this post are from his Flickr stream.) I don’t have any photos of myself from Christmas celebrations in South Dakota in my family… I’ve become the family documentarian, I suppose.

And he even makes eggnog cookies! He’s a keeper, for sure.

I was made fun of for taking even more photos of the beautiful Iowan sunset. They don’t realize how lucky they are.

Later in the evening, we played the infamous dice game. They play it a little bit differently than my family: there are enough gifts for everyone to choose one. Everyone draws a number, which determines the gift-choosing order. As everyone chooses, they also open the gift. They can then decide whether they’re going to force anyone else to trade gifts. The person who draws #1 has the best advantage, because they get one more chance at the end to trade their gifts with any other gift that’s been opened.

Nicholas got #1, so he was very serious for the duration of the game – studying all of the gifts being opened, weighing the advantages of each… I ended up with that “In a Pickle” game he’s holding (and I have some pickle-flavored chapstick to look forward to), because I opened a very big flashlight set – which I traded for a Wal-Mart giftcard and LEGO penguin keychain. Nicholas really wanted that LEGO penguin. All for fun!

The next day we had to return to Minneapolis. We tried taking a new route, and ended up driving right past the Des Moines skyline (adorably tiny) and the capitol building.

If we ever take this route again, I’ll be sure to use a nicer camera.

My beliefs? That’s a really heavy subject for 9:45 p.m. after a long day…

So I’m gonna ignore it.

I played Rock Band 3 tonight and it was fun. We had trouble getting into the 7-player mode, though. We found microphone harmony mode, but two of the three microphones refused to connect – just kept blinking green lights at us. We also couldn’t connect the keyboard if we wanted a guitar and bass. So.

Hopefully it’ll get resolved at some point. I wanna sing some duets!

Ryan also made us chocolate cake shots. I haven’t had one of those since a very fuzzy night back in ’07…

my ipod has gotten me through some tough days. i love music and i love how it can distract me or relax me, or both all at once. if it has a beat and i can either sing along or dance along, i’ll pretty much like the music.

i mostly like indie chick singers, and if you ever play rock band with me, these are the kinds of songs i’ll typically choose to sing. (i’m looking forward to singing ida maria in the new rock band 3 soon!)

i cried after i met fiona apple because i so freakin’ happy. i told her i loved her music because i’m a huge nerd.

feist insisted that the audience sing along. that may be the best concert i’ve been to. it’s at least in the top five.

liz phair was smokin’ hot. that was a fun show for singing along, too.

it’s hard for me to dislike music unless it’s just noisy or the singer’s voice is irritating. sometimes i even like country music… though not really today’s “modern” county songs… unless it’s shania twain or faith hill.

what?! i like singing along!