Planning for Friendsgiving



I tend to get ahead of myself when it comes to planning parties. I create lists for all of the imaginary parties I plan to host. I tear out ideas from magazines about centerpieces and place cards that I think would work well for said imaginary parties. I make mailing lists for all of the people who I'd love to see sitting around a table together. I tell you, there is a lot of planning that goes into these imaginary parties that will most likely never happen.

Most of these dinner gatherings end up just morphing into a regular evening of hanging out. People are invited (but not by fun mailed-out invitations), drinks are made (but not in fancy wine glasses), and food is consumed (but not in a three course meal sort of way). Laughter is always involved, so it's never a bad deal.
But Friendsgiving? Friendsgiving has always been the most elusive dinner gathering for me.

I've tried to plan one the past couple of years, but due to all the normal life things that come up between November and December, it has never come to fruition. Has this happened to anyone else? Am I the only one who has failed multiple times to provide a Friendsgiving?

This year Friendsgiving is planned for this Saturday, and I am pretty much super duper excited about it. I feel like I'm jinxing it by talking about it. Food has been planned and discussed and the prepping has begun. My place is tiny, so it will be a cozy (read: packed) evening, but I'm thoroughly excited.

Yay for food! Yay for holidays! Yay for friends!

Forgetfulness - Housesitting Edition

I don't typically consider myself a forgetful person, but for some reason whenever I housesit my brain shuts down during the packing process.

It could have something to do with the fact that I usually "pack" in a 5 minute period of time.

Whatever the reason, I've forgotten some fairly important things.

(PS - That's Missy in the picture above. She likes to survey her empire (aka: yard) when she gets the paper in the morning)

Shoes: Once during the summer, I moved into a house wearing flip flops. I had all my work clothes for the next couple of days, but I had neglected to bring work shoes. That resulted in a trip home at midnight to grab shoes for the duration of the trip.

Makeup: Kind of a necessity for me during the work week. Luckily the absence of said make up was discovered on a Saturday, so I was able to retrieve it prior to Sunday. Hooray!

Socks: Not the end of the world, but my feet were fairly cold for a day.

Mousse: This resulted in a pony tail day.

Shampoo/conditioner: Another pony tail day.

Tights: Again, not the end of the world. Just another one of those, "Seriously, Emily!" moments.

Underwear: that was an interesting day.

Hair dryer: I woke up, took a shower, went to grab my dryer - discovered I'm a loser who forgot something important. I don't like going to work with wet hair, so I finished getting ready then drove across town to my place to get the hair dryer and finish the hair process.
I still got to work early. BOOM!

There have been many, many more items that I have forgotten, but most of them were little things that don't really make a difference in the getting-ready process (earrings, iPad, etc...)

This has nothing to do with anything I just said, but I hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving filled with family, friends, and food! I expect to see many, many delicious food photos in the next week.

Side note: I'm glad that the trees still look like this. I will never get tired of these colors.