Feast Prepared. Faces Stuffed. Mission Accomplished.

This year was our first Thanksgiving on our own, and we decided to go all out.  I (Autumn) am a listmaker, hence the above list in preparation for the big day.  Notice pumpkin pie is already checked off as I made it the night before.

These little guys were made from the extra pumpkin filling and pie pastry.  It was also in an effort to keep Casey from cutting into the pie the night before ;)

Behold our tiny Northern Ireland oven.  It cooks better than any oven we've had before, but this picture doesn't do justice to the size of this thing.  I have to admit I was a bit nervous about the timing of cooking everything.

First thing on the list was to make the Sweet Potato Souffle.

Then.... the bird....

We bought a frozen turkey and decided we would do all the gross turkey things ourselves.  Casey volunteered to be the gut scooper, however, there was no sign of the infamous baggie of innards we were supposed to find.  So, assuming they did it differently here in Northern Ireland, Casey proceeded to violate the turkey until we thought everything was out.  Then as I went to clean the bird, out fell the baggie from the other end.  We didn't know what a "clean" turkey looked like since we hadn't done it before.

Then we got said turkey situated in the pan and in our tiny Easy Bake Oven.  Here's the done bird....

Notice anything odd about him?  After looking at a gajillion turkey cooking websites and watching a video, you'd think we would've figured out we had our turkey upside down! It still tasted good :)

Casey did an excellent job carving turkey lurkey and arranging him on the plate.

 Our finished feast!

Yum!

Oh, by the way,  we have a patio area that we have been waiting for our landlords to come close in since September.  They decided to come do it on our Thanksgiving, so we had workers outside our kitchen all day.  In this picture, there is a guy on a ladder just outside the window.  Just another joy of Thanksgiving abroad.  They had no clue why we were making so much food.

This is a happy me after making a successful meal!

We finished it all off with our afternoon snack of coffee and pumpkin pie.  

What a great Thanksgiving!  We even got to Skype with our families and I got to see my Grandma get tickled.  Priceless.

Yes, we are thankful :)