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Henri Jean (Ocala, Florida)
February 9, 2016

Thanksgiving 2013 - Page 125 Volume Challenge

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If you read the other journaling on the companion page, it is the same.

This is an overlay I purchased - I did not make this. I stuck the picture behind the frames. That is all.

However, I did make all the food my self so that counts for something even if I didn't do anything fancy for the layout. Unfortunately the 20 pound turkey didn't make it in the picture. I do not know why.


On the table are little pilgrims and Indians, a couple Indians in a canoe and a little replica of the Mayflower. I bought those when my kids were very small - they are made of resin and look like porcelain and are breakable but those things have been placed strategically around the different food dishes for as long as I can remember and a for every Thanksgiving that they can remember.

Every year my oldest, my mischievous one would hold the Mayflower or the canoe with the Indians over the mashed potatoes or corn souffle or gravy and wait for me to tell him to put the canoe or the Mayflower down, it wouldn't float. He would giggle, I would act mad - it was a Thanksgiving routine and we always had company for Thanksgiving dinner - lots of friends and it always got attentions and it was harmless.

Or it was until the Mayflower took a good dunking in the sweet potato casserole one year. It did actually look like it was sailing across the marshmallows. He hasn't done that anymore. Not that he doesn't want to. I must admit, I had a hard time not laughing.

I have used this table cloth since they were very little too. It has been on every table Thanksgiving table - since around the time my kids were born and my oldest has crossed 40! I don't remember ever not using it.

I remember the year I got it though. I also bought a nice resin turkey to put on the table the same year and the pilgrims and Indians too. I thought it was beautiful. A few years ago I decided that turkey wasn't so beautiful and passed it on to another family member who still saw beauty in it that old orange and green and gold and chartreuse turkey with matching turkey candleholders and bought one I liked a lot better.

Anyway, I put the multi-colored almost neon turkey on the table before Thanksgiving and it really made the house feel like Thanksgiving with the turkey perched in the middle. I set the table the day before Thanksgiving and it really looked grand to me. The table setting, dishes, placemats, napkin rings, center turkey, and little pilgrims and Indians I knew I would always use on Thanksgiving and only on Thanksgiving for a very long time. I didn't expect it to be nearly 40 years though.

Back to the poor turkey. I set the table the day before. He had been sitting in the center of the table and then on the day before Thanksgiving I set the table and put the turkey back on the center of the table. Then it hit me. No matter how lovely the turkey was sitting there, his back end or back side was not lovely. (No turkey statue has an attractive butt - neither do real turkeys). I didn't want any of my dinner guests to eat Thanksgiving dinner with a turkey butt in their face. I don't care how much fruit and corn you placed around that turkey and how much you tried to make it look nice, it was still a turkey butt.

I was really stressing - who do I seat on that side of he table, in that chair where they have a view of the turkey butt throughout dinner?

I got in the car and went back to the store where I bought the tablecloth (Bed Bath and Beyond or one of those stores) and they had sold out of all the tablecloths like mine! (Except for the display tablecloth which was round and would work nicely if I had a round table that would take this 90" display cloth that was the same fabric as my big tablecloth. But I didn't have a table cloth that size - 30" inches across the top and 30" to the floor on each side.

My next quest was to find a 30" round table and I found one. And it was cheap (and it would be used once a year - and it would be covered top to floor with a tablecloth. So the sales person got up on a ladder and climbed up to the high displays and got the lovely table cloth down for me, never thinking they would sell their display. Had it been on a lower shelf where it could be reached - I'm sure it would have been gone.

Then I found a flimsy table in the same store that would work just - 30" across the top and 30" to the ground. Cheap and Flimsy but it would work just fine as long as no one decided to try to tap dance on it.

So home I trotted with a round 90" tablecloth to match the big one and the small wooden table that you screw the legs into. Actually, it was a stretch calling it wooden. It was particle board.

With a little moving around of the furniture, I put the new table with the new tablecloth on it in the corner of my dining room and put the turkey on it with his backside in the corner. Worked beautifully.

That became my dessert table and to this day, that is still my Thanksgiving dessert table. However, I've upgraded - in the early 90's I had a furniture make me one strong enough to park a Buick on and when it isn't Thanksgiving, it holds my depression American Forsteria punchbowl and punchbowl cups which I never use but we look at a lot.

I decorate the house for Thanksgiving with the turkey on the table facing people to greet them when they come into the room. He stays there when I set the table the day before.

But when it is time to get ready for dinner, he goes on the dessert table in the back corner standing guard over the pecan pie and cheesecakes and other desserts.

Then the dining table is free to put all the food. - the little pilgrims and Indians and the Mayflower that has become such a part of our Thanksgiving friend and family celebration stay on the table!

In these pictures I left the turkey (the one I bought 4 or 5 years ago at Cracker Barrel) on the table for pictures with all the food but before we sat down to eat - he was banished to the dessert table with his backside in the corner.


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