We no longer have any family near us so last Thanksgiving we accepted an invitation from a friend down the street to join the celebration at their home.  Her instructions to all of us were to bring whatever you had to have to make it Thanksgiving to you.  We had about 25 people and quite the selection of food!!  We could probably have fed more like 75 but that meant we all took home leftovers which was actually a pretty good deal.  I took Aunt Sybil's cranberries (fresh berries ground with oranges and sugar and then mixed with red jello and lots of pecans – yum!), rhubarb pie for my DH and oldest DD who don't do pumpkin, and my family's cornbread dressing.   We are celebrating with the same friends this year and I was told that we are up to 30 people this year and I am to bring the cornbread dressing for all….it was the hands down favorite last year.   DH will smoke a turkey to take as that's our tradition.  He will actually smoke two because there are never any leftovers when we take one someplace.

Stuffed celery is a requirement for us too.  We make two kinds – one with colby cheese and mayo, the other with cream cheese.  We mix chopped pecans with one and chopped olives with the other – the combination varies year to year but it's always those ingredients.

Christmas is variable for us – in recent years I've taken to making something like cinnamon rolls for breakfast…using a do ahead recipe so I just have to pop it into the oven first thing in the morning.  After that it's a series of appetizers that I set out one after another all day.  Some hot, some cold.  We just much our way through the day as we play with our gifts and watch old movies.

Grandma Marj's yeast rolls and homemade noodles in turkey broth, my mother in law and I keep practicing, but it is never quite right! Hopefully we have many more years of Marj helping us to learn.