We broke out the china!

I've always wanted to start a family tradition in which we sit down to a "fancy" meal on our around the holidays. This past Sunday evening we decided to try our first ever attempt and even put the wedding china to good use.

The food turned out DELISH!! Gary and I had to pinch ourselves to keep from drifting off to what seemed like a fine dining experience in the comfort of our own home.

Our menu included Baked chicken and acorn squash, green bean casserole, stuffing, and hot rolls. We were so pleased with the way the chicken turned out!! It was a new recipe that I'm sure we'll be coming back to for many years to come. You can find it at the link below. We chose to use all white chicken and I would recommend increasing the brown sugar by a 1/2 cup. YUM!!

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Baked-Chicken-and-Acorn-Squash

The girls helped with setting the table. We were a little nervous about things being "too nice", but were pleased to avoid any major catastrophes.
As you can tell by this picture, Sophia has impeccable etiquette skills.

A picture of all of us with the exception of Gretchen. She was upstairs resting which made for a more manageable experience. Don't worry, of course she ate, just an hour later.

Oh and one more thing. Look at our glasses. We created a holiday drink that was so DIVINE. I can remember back in my college days, a friend of mine named Jen, was such a food connoisseur. She introduced me to the fruit Pomegranate. It is an unusual market find that consists of tart seeds of the MOST BEAUTIFUL color. These tiny treasures are edible and we opted to add them to our holiday drink. We simply mixed equal parts of sparkling white grape juice with cranapple juice. Threw in about 1/2 of the seeds and voila...pure magic!

Our first sit down dinner was a success. Sure we had to redirect the girls several times, but all in all it was a night to remember. After the clean up, we started trimming the tree. I'll post pictures of the green beauty soon!