Food, Football, Five dollar games and Skinny Jeans...

Well, it's official. Thanksgiving is over, Delilah is playing Christmas music, my trees are lit and I am in Christmas mode full-force. We even had a cold front move through last night and the high today is only 55 degrees. I might even be able to bust out a jacket!

We had a great Thanksgiving and for once it actually seemed like I had time off! We didn't travel this year because we spent Thanksgiving with my family, so it was 4 days spent sleeping in our bed and we even got a few days to sleep in. Glorious!

I had a few duties for Thanksgiving lunch and I took those duties seriously. Which is why I called on the Pioneer Woman for help. I was in charge of rolls, a side, dessert and a dip for the evening hours of football and laziness. I decided that the buttered rosemary rolls, green beans, and the pear crisp would be my contributions. The fact that these famous rolls would have to rise for 3-4 h0urs was not lost, so I popped out of bed at 7:30 to get going in the kitchen. I'm such a domestic creature...this I know. By 8:30 I had rolls rising, pears peeled, coffee brewing and I was watching Snoopy float down Broadway. Does it get any better?

Pioneer Woman Buttered Rosemary Rolls (click the links above for PW recipes)

Green Beans: wash, snap stem, season with olive oil, salt and pepper, arrange on a baking sheet and roast at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes (until desired tenderness)

The next dip is SO good. My friend Meredith introduced me to this. It is a can of black beans (drained), a can of corn (drained), 1-2 avocados sliced (depends on how big your avocados are and how much you want. I like a lot of avocado!) and a jar of salsa. Serve with tortilla chips.

Pioneer Woman's Pear Crisp

After letting the rolls rise for what seemed like an eternity I started baking them. I began to wonder if they were really all they were cracked up to be since it had been a 4 hour project. Let me tell you sister friends...it was worth every.single.minute. And truth be told, they are SO easy. You just have to give the yeast time to do it's thang. After I did my share of attempting to cook we headed over to my Nana and Papa's house for lunch. As usual, Teeny outdid herself and we were over served with fabulous dressing, ham, PW's mac and cheese, mom's creamed corn goodness, green beans and then...well, then we had a roll....or 3.

As Thanksgiving's go, we capped off the day with back-to-back football games. The Cowboys provided our afternoon entertainment and then the Longhorns were the nightcap. But I would be withholding information if I didn't throw in that there were 5 of us who felt bad for the poor schmucks having to work Thanksgiving at Old Navy. We didn't want them to be working in vain so we decided to give their $15 jean sale a whirl. 3 pair of skinny jeans later we were headed home for kickoff. Don't judge...

The Aggie's sure put up a fight. We had a few that were really tightly wound at our house. Thank goodness the Horns pulled it out and Thanksgiving 2009 wasn't lost. After the game we charted out our Black Friday plan of Attack. There were $5 board games and drum sets calling our name. The family we adopted has 3 boys and just about everything on their wish list gave us a reason to justify standing outside of Target with 500 of our closest friends at 4:30AM...

If you're jealous now, you don't even want me to throw in your face the fact that we capped off our shopping trip with breakfast at IHOP. I know, sometimes life's not fair. You just slept in and made fun of those of us standing in lines 55 people deep in the name of a discount and a $5 off coupon.

When all of the hoopla was said and done I came home and finished my Christmas decorations. Rookie was highly involved....Ho-Ho-Ho! Now I'm ready for Christmas shopping, gift wrapping, and ornament exchanging! Merry merry!