Thanksgiving Handprints

Thanksgiving is almost here again. In fact, Ava is already off school for the holiday.

We've been working on a few Thanksgiving crafts to decorate our apartment. Last year we made hand print turkeys and they were such a big hit with the kids. You can see them here. Both Ava and Lola were pretty keen to make hand print turkeys again. This year we decided to mix things up a little and rather than making just hand print turkeys we went for a whole Thanksgiving theme and made hand print pilgrims and hand print Native Americans as well.

Thanksgiving handprints on our front door

Christmas 2012

Well, Christmas is over for another year. I hope you all had a lovely day.

We had a nice Christmas shared with friends who were visiting from Australia. The day was pretty grey and rainy so we spent it inside which, being Australian, we're not really accustomed to. I guess cold Christmases spent indoors are the norm in the Northern Hemisphere but I'm still getting the hang of it! What we certainly are accustomed to however, is the copious amount of food that goes hand in hand with Christmas. Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, cauliflower gratin, sweet potato bake, green beans, sparkling apple cider, Christmas pudding and custard. If it wasn't for the Christmas pudding and custard it pretty much would've been a repeat of Thanksgiving! 

And then of course, there were the copious amount of presents! Both girls were spoiled by Santa, friends and family. Oh, and by us! Ava was super excited that Santa brought her Bouncy, the "electric" dog that she has been going on and on about for months. The damn thing yapped and jumped around in circles all day but Ava didn't seem to mind. She cuddled it all day and even took it to bed with her - where she worked out that turning it off might be a good idea!  Lola had asked Santa for "a present and a ball and a bus". She was pretty excited when the first present she opened was a wooden school bus. Two birds with one stone! The ball was also crossed off her list thanks to a gift from our visiting friends. 

Both Ava and Lola received new wheels for Christmas - a scooter for Ava and a balance bike for Lola. The girls were pretty keen to get out in the courtyard and practise riding but the rain made this a little tricky. An incredibly late lunch followed by Lola's afternoon nap and a bout of vomiting (Lola) then kept us inside for the rest of the day. Luckily Lola was feeling much better by evening. Too many grapes and blueberries for breakfast I think. 

All up we had a nice day - if you don't count the girls going a little stir crazy from being cooped up inside all day or Lola projectile vomiting twice :( 

Here's a look at our Christmas day - minus the vomit...

Christmas family photo

A Thanksgiving Turkey... Costume!

I've mentioned before that Ava had this idea in her head that she must dress up as a turkey for Thanksgiving. I thought this would be a fun idea so I got to work on making costumes for both Ava and Lola.

Lots of felt, coat hanger wire and hours later we had two little turkeys ready to celebrate Thanksgiving!

Here's a look at the costumes I made for the girls. They both happened to have brown onesie tracksuits in their wardrobe (as you do!) which made the perfect base for their costumes. With the addition of tails  (wired to stand up), turkey feet and beaks the girls were good to go. Unfortunately Lola wouldn't wear her costume for a photo so you'll just have to believe me when I say she looked adorable.

Turkey Ava flapping her wings

Happy Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving is over for another year, leaving us with bellies full of roast turkey, maple glazed sweet potato, cauliflower gratin, roast brussel sprouts and home made pumpkin pie. So completely stuffed!

We had a lovely lunch at our apartment with good friends and (as seems to be tradition) a little too much food. Not that we have huge amounts of food left over mind you; maybe just enough for one more dinner for two. Not too bad.

Here's a look at our Thanksgiving lunch with the Autumn Leaf Turkeys that I made used as place cards.

Leaf turkey place card

Autumn Leaf Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving!

I had intended for this post to go up last night but a little technical glitch (I reached the limit of Blogger's included photo storage space) threw a spanner in the works. All sorted now.

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In the lead up to Thanksgiving our apartment seems to be full of Autumn leaves and turkeys. So I thought, why not combine the two in a fun craft project? Why not indeed!

Ava has a five day weekend for Thanksgiving and the weather is pretty grey today so it's the perfect opportunity to work on another fun craft project: Autumn Leaf Turkeys.

Autumn Leaf Turkeys

Sneak Peak : Turkey Costume

Remember how I mentioned here that Ava wants to dress up as a turkey for Thanksgiving?

Well, her request got the better of me and I started thinking of ideas for a costume. I know there's no need for costumes for Thanksgiving but I just couldn't help myself! Plus it gave me an excuse to get out the new sewing machine and play :)

Ava's costume isn't quite finished yet but I thought I'd share a little sneak peek of some of what I've come up with so far. So here you go, one turkey beak and and two turkey feet!

The rest of Ava's costume will be revealed on Thanksgiving so stay tuned!

Ava in her turkey beak

Ava's turkey feet

Turkey Hand Prints for Thanksgiving

In just one week's time it will be Thanksgiving. It feels like only yesterday we were celebrating our very first Thanksgiving here in America. It sounds like such a cliché, but the time really has just flown by. 

Ava is super excited about Thanksgiving - especially the turkey part of the holiday. She can't wait to eat turkey, she wants to dress as a turkey and she's eager to create turkey crafts. Dressing as a turkey may be a little odd but making turkey crafts is right up our alley.

A little search on Pinterest provided a lot of inspiration for turkey themed activities. I've got a few turkey projects planned for the girls but first up here's the messiest (and therefore the most fun!) of the lot: turkey hand prints.

Hand print turkey

This is a really simple project and the kids had a lot of fun with it.  

Pumpkin Pie & Tofurky

I'm getting a little slow with my posts. 
Here it is, a week since Thanksgiving and I'm only just getting around to posting about it...

Our first Thanksgiving was a nice day. We had one of Kim's workmates (who also happens to be an old friend from Adelaide) over for lunch and stuffed ourselves full of holiday food; turkey, sweet potato, potato bake, green beans, broccolini and crusty sourdough followed by home made pumpkin pie. Oh, and "Tofurky" for our vegetarian guest. I couldn't resist buying the "Tofurky" roast - even just for the name! Actually, the "Tofurky" tasted pretty good. Quite similar in flavor to real turkey however the texture just wasn't quite right, kind of like a turkey meatloaf!

I have to admit that I succumbed to laziness (or lack of time and baking equipment) for a lot of the meal. The potato bake and sweet potato (with maple glazed pecans and cranberries, mmm...) were both ready made side dishes from our local Trader Joe's supermarket. The ready made meals here are fantastic. Nothing like the flavorless mush passing as ready meals in Australia. There are so many good options when it comes to ready made meals here that you could get away with never cooking yet eat a healthy, home-made style meal every night. And now while we're living in our furniture-less new apartment at the moment that's just what we're doing!  

Anyway, back to Thanksgiving...

The one thing that I did make myself was the pumpkin pie. Ok, so there was a little bit of cheating involved (I used a store bought pie base and tinned pumpkin) but I'm still going with calling it home made. I got my recipe from joyofbaking.com. You can find it here. Or, you can follow my much shorter, edited version of the recipe below.

Almost Thanksgiving

It's almost Thanksgiving - another first for us here in America.

Ava is pretty excited about Thanksgiving although she has absolutely no idea what it's about! All she cares about is that she gets to eat turkey and cranberry sauce, and for that she's very thankful.

I'm looking forward to roasting a turkey and baking a pumpkin pie. I have this image in my head of me roasting an entire turkey, so big that it takes up the entire oven. Of course, there's no way that we could realistically eat that much turkey (no matter how much Ava loves it) so I've let practicality take over and I'm roasting a turkey breast roll instead. This way we get all the best turkey meat anyway. I'm not so good with all the "gooby" bits!

Ava has been drawing lots of turkeys for Thanksgiving decorations and for friends back home  - who of course will not be celebrating Thanksgiving. Here are a few of Ava's best turkey drawings.

Ava's first attempt at drawing a turkey.

The turkey gets a little more body this time

A Thanksgiving picture for our neighbors