Prepping for our First Thanksgiving

This year we will be hosting our first Thanksgiving feast!

Instead of going home to St. Louis like we do for every major holiday, we finally convinced our parents to make the trek to Chicago so that we could try our hand at making the family meal. It will be bittersweet since we will miss out on seeing our extended families that day, but now that we are married and have a ton of things which we registered for that we never use, I really wanted to start taking our turn at hosting it. Plus, now that my sister lives in Chicago as well, my parents have one more reason to come up north.

Last weekend, armed with 11 Bed Bath & Beyond 20% off coupons which I collected over the year, we picked up some extra odds-and-ends we'd need for the big day like a baster, a pie keeper and a few more things.

One of them was this great Counter Art Bamboo Carving Board:

I can't want to make my first turkey and carve it on our new board with our nice, Wustof carving knifes.

Another good find, was The Nifty 3-Tier Oven Rack.

I never would have thought of this, but I think this will come in extra handy for keeping multiple dishes warm at once on one half of the oven, while still having a large turkey on the bottom rack of the other half. At most Thanksgiving dinners, each of our family members have always been responsible for bringing different dishes and casseroles in a pot-luck fashion, but since I will be hosting out of town guests this year, our parents won't have an additional oven and prep space so that won't be possible. Thus, this will allow me to have more things in my oven simultaneously.

Another find was at the Crate & Barrel Outlet. I just think these are adorable. Dave thinks they are silly which is why I initially took them off of our registry last year, but now that we are officially hosting a meal requiring gravy I just had to get my hands on these super-cute Individual Gravy Boats from Crate & Barrel:

Besides being adorable, I also think these are practical and eliminate the need for reaching across the table or waiting for the graving boat to be passed around, resulting in immediate gravy gratification :-). Plus, they are only $1.95 each.

Now that we have all of the supplies it's time to start planning our menu. I will be preparing a dinner for eight and am just starting to brainstorm some recipe options. If any of you have delicious Thanksgiving recipes to share, please leave comments with recipes or links!