Thanksgiving Feast

     Thanksgiving was a jam packed day of food, family,and fun. Me, being the person I am, woke up at 5 am and suddenly had the realization of all that I had hoped to accomplish during the day- homemade breakfast for the family, catch a bit of the parade on the TV, prepping side dishes, making desserts, and hopefully taking some family photos. With all that needed to get done, I promptly got up and started cooking my little heart out.

     I worked with great ease, enjoying the peacefulness of the house, being filled with yummy smells of muffins, cakes (for cake balls), sweet potatoes, all while Christmas music from Pandora filled me with holiday cheer. I worked like this for 2 1/2-3 hours when Lindsay joined me in prepping.

     After the rest of the house woke up and we enjoyed some family time, we all got ready for some family pictures in our yard. It was sunny, warm, and beautiful outside. I have some fantastic shots that I will be sharing soon here. If you are on Facebook, you have seen a few that I have made my profile and cover photos :)

     Then we came back inside to finish working on our desserts. Since the only people in our home that enjoy pumpkin pie are John and myself, we decided to make something else. Cake balls in two flavors and Cookie Dough M&M's Truffles.

 All the girls were ready to help me out and make some delicious sweets.

 When it was time to roll the cake balls, JT wanted to help.

 Any guess what cake we used? Red velvet! This was our scary, creepy "blood hands" photo.

After all the balls were made, we had to chill them for a while.

These are the oh so good Cookie Dough M&M Truffles prior to being covered in chocolate. I think these were the favorite dessert of everyone this year. Link to the recipe for this can be found here.

The messy, yet delicious cake balls and truffles. On my to do list, find out how to get better, smooth results with my chocolate bark.

 The Thanksgiving Spread!

 My first ever sweet potato casserole. It was so good! Taken from a Ruth's Chris recipe I found on Pinterest. Here is where you can get the recipe for yourself.

In addition to Sister Schubert Rolls, I made some Jim N' Nick's Cheesey Biscuits. They were declared a big hit by the family and quite similar to those in the restaurant. If these sound good, go here.

 Good old mashed potatoes made by John. Delicious as always.

 Simply the best bacon wrapped green beans. Made last year for the first time, these are now a regular for our Thanksgiving table.

The ham! Oh the ham! We discovered a few years ago that all of us really preferred ham over turkey for our holiday meals. So for now, only ham sits on our table.

 The Apedaile kids ready to eat. *Note on JT's plate the abundance of black olives that he placed on it. I think that was his favorite part of the meal.