thanksgiving

i feel like it's an obligatory post waiting to happen - our thanksgiving weekend away at the cottage. let it be known it was my first time visiting the famed "cottage country" in ontario, and we weren't even in real "cottage country". we were slightly north of peterborough, in kawartha lakes, with a lovely place on buckhorn lake. the buckhorn thing is my educated guess.

i had seen pictures of this said cottage on facebook, via angel's profile. it looked so good that i could hardly believe it was a cottage. so i emailed the owner, bill, and begged him to share for thanksgiving. he agreed after a few days of not hearing back at all (bless the unspoiled world of non-internet-ness).

coordinating the details of the cottage visit was anything but a piece of cake. the control freak that i am fretted about everything. terence and i grocery shopped and alcohol shopped, bringing our food and beverage supplies to a whopping $637 in total, just for the weekend. also, i had no idea what to expect - pots? pans? spatulas? bottle openers? baking trays? honestly, i meant it when i said (while cooking at the cottage), thanksgiving would be much easier in my kitchen.

after a few delays spurred on by workaholics who insisted that we must finalize 2009 planning before we go home on friday, packing $637 worth of food and alcohol into two cars plus people and their belongings and terence's personal dvd, video game, and board game collection, and a pit stop at chapters, we finally made it to the cottage. it was dark, it was pretty, we were excited. we ate the cake that consumed my life for the week prior, and went to bed.

terence's birthday cake - scene from mario kart
what greeted me in the morning outside was absolutely beautiful and made me fall in love all over with fall.

the leaves! the colours! the lake! the sky! the reflections! the trees!

the lake in the morning - very peaceful except for the breeze that moved the water slightly

the canoe's maiden voyage with alex and terence. i was being responsible and supervising.

the turkey dinner worked out, after some intense scrubbing with easy-off in the oven. the meal was big, fulfilling, and knocked out terence promptly after his first plateful of food. he didn't even make it to dessert, but there's photographic evidence of him sneaking the leftover dessert we saved for him the next morning.

here's me hugging my creation - i even stuffed things up this one's bum!

my favourite view - from the hammock. also my favourite fall colours.

all in all, a really fun weekend. we were ambitious and didn't finish all of our alcohol, but we made pretty good headway with the food. had the other two stayed for the whole weekend, we would've probably finished most of our food and bevs that the cars would've been even emptier coming home.

next time, i want to rent the cottage for a full week. i felt like there was always something to do and i could never fully relax. for example, saturday morning we had to go buy easy-off and do the easy-off'ing and then cook the feast. sunday was our last day so i couldn't fully relax knowing that we'd be packing up and leaving soon, too. just needed one more day!!