Friendsgiving 2016

I gotta put together a slap-bang post before Thanksgiving because sometimes done is better than perfect.

Although, perfect is: this beautiful sign that Kayla made for our Friendsgiving last Sunday with all the young families from church.

Less than perfect is: the quality of my pictures. I really need to clean off my phone from grubby hands. (You think I'm talking about my children, but I'm not.) (Although! Emilyn has been doing the cutest thing which is to put her play phone to her ear whenever we say, "Hello?")

The party was a huge success and I wanted to share some of aspects I thought made it so.

It was a potluck, and the Evite "What To Bring" section enabled us to guide people towards covering all the necessary components to a complete spread. 

I divvied food up into smaller "bites," if you will, so that people could pick and choose a couple things together if that was easier than tackling a big item. 

Asking someone to bring cider and a bag of ice guaranteed that our drinks would be cold, even if they wouldn't be refrigerated during church. I also separately requested a 1/2 lb decaf beans to be brought.

I'm learning to delegate, because even when it's a potluck, there can end up being a lot of last minute purchases that add expenses for the host. This way you have margin to splurge on other fun (or necessary) ideas that come up later.

David and I provided the turkey, and since this was a casual gathering, I felt the freedom to not have to present a beautiful (some have called it "stunt") turkey at the table. This would have been really challenging anyway, seeing as the function immediately followed service on Sunday.

So, we roasted the turkey on Friday (since David was off then but had to work on Saturday). I have never before made a turkey in such a relaxed ("not agitated" to be Earnest) manner. It was marvelous.

At 4 o'clock on a relaxed afternoon without any company expected, we got to eat the crispy skin off (ha) and then when it cooled, we sliced and refrigerated the meat to be warmed up in gluten-free (i.e., just corn starch, no flour) gravy in a crock pot on Sunday morning. Crock pot FTW again.

Pro-tip: multi-purposing cups as name cards.

The only other elements of "structure" (I really had to restrain myself here) were a Mad Lib and a brief sharing of everyone's highlight of the year and a challenge of the year.

decorations? activity? "agenda"?

There were four babies in the group that had been born within the last year so the majority of the answers to highlights and challenges was babies. (We laughed when we discovered repeatedly that so many people's "favorite activity" on the Mad Lib was sleeping.)

Kayla was an awesome co-host and I personally had a blast doing this with her. When everyone left (which was late, another good sign), I noticed that I felt so filled up, both literally and figuratively.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. If you need more, check out our 2014 Thanksgiving or revisit the letter I wrote mysef aboout hosting parties.