Thanksgiving Eve

I don't know where this day has gone. Somehow in my pre-thanksgiving frenzy I have managed to spend the ENTIRE day cooking. I will admit that when people used to tell me that they did this, I never believed them. I guess this is karma laughing in my face. Okay Karma, I get it. Thanks for the lesson!

My morning started with creating a pecan cheesecake. Now I realize that this was wayyyyyy over my cooking ability and patience threshold. It better be freakin' delicious because it took me over three hours to put together. At the beginning I was all ready to document my first Thanksgiving preparations so that my sisters could laugh at me. (Yes, I know I am a TOTAL dork. You don't need to tell me...again, Ladies)
Here are all the ingredients:

Yes, I was not messing with you, I started cooking at 7:00 this morning. And I even took a picture to prove it. This was a little into the process, obviously.

This was literally like cooking two cakes in one. I made the crust out of vanilla cookies. Then had to make the filling for a pecan pie. (I was literally holding the mixer in one hand and stirring the mixture over the stove with the other.) Because both hands were occupied, I couldn't take a picture of that one, but I did get a shot of the bubbling gooey mess before I started with the mixer.

I have to tell you, at this point I was FREAKING out. I thought this little adventure was going to be a disaster. But I pushed on because I didn't want to crumble to the ground and start crying in front of my five year old.

At this point, I completely gave up on taking pictures. I will snap one tomorrow before we eat...if I remember. After I got this interesting looking mixture into the crust, I still had to make the cheesecake, then bake if for an hour, then let it sit for another hour in the over. This waiting game was not something that I had planned on. Oh well, c'est la vie!

At 4:45 I was done cooking for the night (well, except dinner) and had precooked:
1 pecan-pie cheesecake (Taste of the South magazine)
1 chocolate fudge pie (Real Simple)
1 pumpkin pie
green bean casserole
stuffing
orange glazed carrots
stuffed mushrooms

Looking at this list, I feel like I accomplished NOTHING. I did get the upstairs of the house cleaned (Yay!) but not the downstairs (boo!). I am keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope you have a fun-filled day with friends and family. There is SO much to be thankful for! Oh, and Mom, I'm sorry I never appreciated the day long cook-fest that you had to go through to get Thanksgiving ready. I get it now. Thank you!