The Day Before T-Day

As a lot of you know, I host my family for Thanksgiving. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have a pretty large family, which means about 50+ people come for Thanksgiving. It's crazy, but so much fun. We eat pretty early, around noon, then we have our annual football game. With that many people coming to a holiday, we have a good amount of people playing football. It's a blast and so much fun seeing everybody. I get asked a lot, how do I host Thanksgiving for 50+ people? Well, here's how I do it.

We always get three turkeys and thanks to a friend, we have 18 lbs of butter for tomorrow.

1. Have an amazing husband who takes the day before Thanksgiving off to help get ready. My husband worked hard today to get the house clean, shovel snow, change light bulbs and run errands. I definitely couldn't do this without him.

2. Have awesome parents who will take the kids for a day so you can actually get stuff done and prevent them from messing up the house. Every year my parents take the kids for a day so we can get ready for the big day.

3. Have all the guest bring something. All of our holidays are potluck. The host usually makes the main dish (turkey, ham, etc) and everyone else brings, sides, desserts, salads, paper plates and beverages. That way the host isn't stuck doing everything.

4. Have super cool aunties that not only bring a ton of things, but organize who brings what. They call and get a count of who is coming and let them all know what to bring. I just provide the house and the main dish and they take care of the rest. I am so lucky to have such fantastic aunties.

5. Get as much done ahead of time as possible. I get as much food prepared ahead of time as possible. I brine the turkey, have the veggie tray ready, get the stuffing ingredients all ready to put together and cranberry is sauce done. I also set up all the tables so they are ready to go.

All the tables are ready to go.

6. When it's all done, relax, preferable with a glass of wine :)

Come back tomorrow to check out our Thanksgiving festivities!

Over the weekend I'll be posting some fantastic recipes for all of that leftover turkey. Whatever you do, don't throw away that turkey carcass. Throw it in a large storage bag, then into your freezer. I'll show you what you can do with it.

Happy Thanksgiving!