What a day

We had 12 over for Thanksgiving today. 16 people total. 11 adults. 5 children.
I made

• the turkey (a 22 pounder! I was worried because of its size but it cooked very nicely in an oven bag)
• sweet potatoes (from this recipe - these were so good Benson and my nephew, Adam thought they were the dessert! And Benson had seconds!)
• a coconut cream pie (from my America's Test Kitchen cookbook - a little fussy but VERY good)
• a cheater cheesecake (no baking)
• a cherry pie
• rolls
• cranberry sauce (another America's Test Kitchen recipe)

And nothing was disgusting! (This is the coconut cream pie, with a little peak at the cherry pie,

which was rather ugly — in spite of the fact that I cut out little maple leaves from the dough
and used them to cover the top of the pie — because I was short about a cup of cherries
and it was sunken in the middle)

Actually, it was all very good, especially the cranberry sauce and the coconut cream pie. I don't think I will ever buy cranberry sauce again. It was four ingredients (well, five because I felt the need to add lemon zest) and took a grand total of 11 minutes. LOVED it. The guests (all family) brought wonderful things too, like mashed potatoes and a rice casserole with mushrooms. And a pumpkin roll. And a Better-Than-Sex Trifle (although my sister-in-law says she didn't have enough whipped cream in it so it wasn't really complete - so we started to call it the Better-Than-Heavy-Petting trifle). And au gratin potatoes. And sweet pickles.
Because it's not a family get-together without sweet pickles. I actually sat and ate a whole jar of pickles at my mother-in-laws when I was pregnant with my first son. It was a smaller jar, but still!
So there you have it.
The funny thing? I made a memo board for my mom (kinda like this one) and a robot stuffie for my nephew for their birthdays. And did I take a picture of either of them after I finished them?
No.
All I have is this picture of the robot front before I did the embroidery and put it all together. The front panel was designed in Quark and I printed it on printer fabric. I then stitched along the black lines. The pattern is from here.
It looked pretty cute. You're just gonna have to trust me.