turkey day recap

I think I may have, sort of, recovered from Thanksgiving.  Well, the shopping really took it out of me!  So I went over to Jan's for Thanksgiving, which is always nice because then I only have to do a little bit of cooking :)  I baked cream cheese swirled pumpkin bread, made cranberry orange sauce and hot spinach artichoke dip.  I was on the phone with my Mom while I was making that and holy cow!  When it was done, I tried a little bit and it was sooooo good!  I used this recipe off the knorr veg packet, only minus mayonaise and water chestnuts.  I just doubled the cream cheese.  Oh, and I made it in the crock pot instead of baking it.  I'm happy to say it was a hit :) 
Ummmm, and this is funny - I found out that I cannot follow simple instructions!  Jan's fam makes instant mashed potatoes for their dinner because no one wants to make the potatoes so that's just what they do.  I was wanting to help in the kitchen so I was tasked with making enough for 14 people.  Easy enough, yes?  Yeah.....I didn't really read the directions at all so I got the water measurement mixed up with the potato measurement and then I just dumped it all in the pan, which I didn't know someone had already turned on so the whole lot of it got scorched.  Eeeek.  So, Susan, who is Jan's MIL tried her darndest to help me add more milk, then water, to try and get the mixture right again.....it didn't work out well!   For the leftovers dinner last night we just scrapped those and started over!  And I volunteered to make REAL potatoes next time!  LOL
Jan was planning to hit the black Friday sales, and I never commit until I see the adds.  Well, this year Walmart and Michaels actually started their sales on Thanksgiving!  We scoured the ads and made our game plan - which means we cut out pictures of what we want and make a collage page for each store and the times of the sales so we can stay focused.  So we ventured out about 9ish to Michael's.....then Wallyworld.  The entire parking lot was FULL.  The store was packed and a crazy madhouse!  I was circling the $1.96 movies with a load of people and thought I would never be able to move from that area!  We got everything we set out for and then started again at 5:30am the next morning.  We hit a little bit of a time warp in Fred Meyer and lost our focus but at the end of it all I think we got everything we wanted.