My Thanksgiving vicariously lived through Pinterest

The Ott’s are all going to be celebrating Thanksgiving apart this year. :(  I am so sad.  This also means that I won’t be cooking up a yummy Thanksgiving dinner with them either.  I kept seeing all these recipes on Pinterest the other night that I won’t be able to make!  So I am sharing them with you… Here are my must have recipes for Thanksgiving… courtesy of Pinterest and fellow bloggers.

The Glitter Guide posted an elegant DIY Thanksgiving Tablescape idea…  I love this centerpiece because it’s not your typical Thanksgiving orangey and yellow colors!  And I love the gold accents!  This is how I would have set the table….

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Doesn’t this turkey look divine? Roast Turkey with Black Truffle and White Wine Gravy.

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I love Martha Stewart’s Simple Stuffing… I always add cooked sausage to this recipe!

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Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving without Sweet Potatoes Casserole… with little marshmallows on top!

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Call me crazy… but I have to have this jello salad as a part of my Thanksgiving dinner!  It’s better than cranberry sauce.  Thank you to the Wald family for introducing it to us Otts.

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This has been a recent addition to my Thanksgiving must haves… Corn Souffle. Oh, so yummy.

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Photo Credit

Did anyone notice that I did not include a healthy, green vegetable dish??? No green beans or brussels sprouts or spinach?? I say, “no, thank you” to those in my imaginary Thanksgiving!

And don’t worry… I definitely did not forget dessert!  I have to have apple pie!  Milly would always whip up apple and pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving!

This apple pie recipe is courtesy of Robyn Stone from Add a Pinch!

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Why isn’t today Thanksgiving ?!  I’m hungry….

What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish??

Happy Halloween!

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Halloween isn’t really a thing in Europe. There are halloween parties people throw (kind of similarly to how Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo), but there isn’t trick-or-treating. There aren’t costume stores. There aren’t haunted houses. It’s just not celebrated to the extent that Americans celebrate Halloween! Which is a bummer. I think they should jump on this bandwagon. (Also, they should jump on the band wagon of air conditioning!! But that is another story for another time.) It’s always so much fun to dress up and who doesn’t want an excuse to eat lots of candy? So, our Student Activities Committee in Lausanne put together a Halloween party in the house so us Americans wouldn’t be deprived of the holiday celebrations! They gave us two days to come up with a costume…and with no costume stores, it proves to be pretty difficult! However, after Hannah and I stared in our closets trying to come up with something. We eventually came up with this….

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^^”Party Time! Excellent!”

Now that we got all dressed up… we were ready for trick-or-treating and trick-or-treaters. We took turns going to different floors of the house to collect our candy. And in Switzerland we give out Toblerones!

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Everyone did a surprisingly good job at coming up with costumes so last minute!

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Then, we all headed downstairs to dance, play murder mystery, eat lots of yummy treats, and take pictures in our makeshift photobooth. But before we could get to all that fun…we had to walk through the Haunted House. People jumping out and yelling at me doesn’t scare me too badly…but people laying on the floor grabbing my feet in the pitch-black dark will get me to scream. (Confession: I leap onto my bed at night because I’m still afraid of those people that will reach out from under my bed and grab my feet, Sixth Sense style. Worst nightmare. My heart is racing just thinking about it.) We decided to just run through so that they couldn’t torment us too much!

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^^This is Robbie. Robbie is the one who lied on the floor and grabbed my feet! After the haunted house…he became our DJ for the dance party (hence the headphones).

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Garth and I had the best time! And we may or may not have come in 2nd place for best costume :)

And the night got even better because the RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES! Yes, I stayed up to watch every single second of that game (from 1am – 4:30am). There was nothing in this world that I would miss this game for. Not even sleep. Even if it meant I had to stand for the entire last two innings cause I was going to fall asleep sitting down. I love that team so much and I couldn’t be more proud to call myself a fan. Here’s to my boys (as Milly would say)!

A Nantucket Fourth of July

If you follow me on twitter, you probably already know that I just LOVE spending the Fourth of July on Nantucket. In my opinion, nothing beats a small town’s Fourth of July. The day starts off with everyone ON ISLAND (read about this inside joke here) gathering in town for all of the morning festivities such as, dunk tanks, face paint, pie eating contests, watermelon eating contest, and of course the WATER FIGHT! It’s the town against the firefighters. And this year in particular…the firefighters were not letting anyone leave dry. (I tried to video as much as I could but I was afraid of getting too close cause my camera would have been soaked) Also, you may or may not have heard that I, after two years of placing 2nd in the watermelon eating contest, have finally WON Nantucket’s Annual Watermelon Eating Contest. Allie was so proud of me, she teared up…which I still can’t believe! Anyway, the day continues with either shopping in town or going to the beach. The beaches get pretty packed and crazy so we decided to stay in town. In the evening, we headed over to The Westmoor Club for a Fourth of July Barbeque! And then, usually you end the night with fireworks…but this year the fog rolled in pretty heavy just as the fireworks should have begun. (They don’t call Nantucket the Grey Lady for nothing!) So, they postponed the fireworks to July 5th. And July 5th was a beautiful clear night for watching the firewords and we enjoyed spreading out the celebrations over two days.

I decided to try out the video setting on my camera again and video how we celebrated the Fourth. (So, yes…you’ll get to see me stuff my face with watermelon. I’m in the blue shirt with the fish on it. Also, you’ll see people with their hands up before mine but either they hadn’t swallowed yet or they didn’t eat enough of the red!) Now, without further ado, I present to you A Nantucket Fourth of July…

I am so grateful to live in America and for those who fought for the freedoms that we enjoy each and every day. Happy, happy Fourth of July!