I just opened this thread today and read through everything. This was like a "Judith" lesson on building a vignette! Shee, your centerpiece is lovely. It has reallly transformed over the course of this thread from OK to great. I love the fabric that you first added. It really changed the whole look. Then adding height...The basket brings it together. I, too, like Betty's idea to spray paint it darker - I think it will "ground" it. I especially like the link you found with the white pumpkin on the pedestal with the fall arrangement. I'm going to shamelessly copy that one! You are definietly going to WOW your Thanksgiving guests.

Just as an aside - the man who had a heart attack would have applied for disability, which is NOT welfare. And which he had undoubtedly paid into in the form of Social Security taxes all the years that he did work. The amount he would have collected would have been a fraction of what he made during his working years. I am on disability myself - and I'm sure there are many others on this list who are as well. We are not deadbeats or layabouts, and we are not raking in undeserved huge piles of cash. We are getting by, by and large, and some people don't even manage that on disability. The man could not have received "welfare" as even when it existed it was not paid out to men. But aside from that - back to the original subject. Frankly I would have been quite up-front about telling someone who offered to bring a frozen turkey that they should either bring a COOKED turkey, or bring something else - also already fully prepared. Seriously, any adult should know better. "It's too much trouble for ME to make a turkey, but I'll dump this onerous task that I can't do on someone else" - that's just not acceptable. You know that nearly every grocery store in the country offers fully cooked and hot turkeys through their deli departments, if nothing else. So they could still buy a fully cooked turkey if they didn't know how to cook one themselves. I would have had no qualms whatsoever about telling someone, politely, with a big smile even, that only a COOKED bird was acceptable, and then offer alternatives for things they could bring instead. On the other side of the equation - the host doing something obnoxious instead of one of the guests - one year a fellow grad student offered to make Thanksgiving dinner - and then charged every one a fee PLUS required us to bring something. Needless to say I never attended a dinner at that person's house again! I figure she cleared at least $50 on that deal, plus kept all the leftovers. I found out about this in the car on the way over there. Too late by far to back out, and we had to stop at a grocery on the way so we could all buy something "to bring" - selected from a very specific list which she had provided (at the last minute) to one of the other students. Had I known in advance about the "to bring", I'd have made something. Had I known in advance about the fee, I'd have bowed out entirely. That's the other side of rude dinner party behaviour, LOL! Thanksgiving is no longer stressful for me as I stopped doing it the year my son (now 29) was born. I was one day out of the hospital, he was 3 days old, and the entire family (and all their kids and various and sundry significant others) descended on me with their usual ridiculously high expectations. Nobody brought anything, they all knew I was less than 24 hours out of the hospital after childbirth, nobody even OFFERED to bring anything. They all sat down and proceeded to gripe about every. single. thing. They were particularly incensed that there were no home-made rolls (I had bought good-quality dinner rolls) and no pumpkin pie (which I have never made in my life anyway, including for all the 20 preceding family Thanksgiving dinners). They complained about the lack of cranberry relish, another item which I have never willingly made and certainly hadn't made in the 8 years since leaving home as an adult. I spent 2 days preparing a huge feast, and then I spent the entire Thanksgiving "celebration" inundated with nitpicking and whining. In 20 years, I had done every Thanksgiving dinner - since I was 6 years old - by myself except for 2. And they KNEW I was pregnant and due to deliver sometime in late November/early December. The fact that I was 10 days early had things gone according to "plan" doesn't help, as if I HADN'T been early, I'd have been hugely pregnant and about to pop while still having to make dinner for 12 ingrates. So, that was the last bird day for me, and no one else ever bothered to do a family holiday meal ever again (keeping in mind I nearly always did Xmas meals as well for the family). Sometimes one sister would do a mini-family meal, where she would pointedly NOT invite certain of the rest of the siblings - and she always wondered why my dad boycotted those meals. He didn't want to go unless the WHOLE family was there. Otherwise he knew he would have to listen to hours of sniping by those present against the unfavored remainder of his offspring, LOL! I take that back, I did do bird day one more time - when my dad was in his late 80's. Nobody but the sister who was living with him and mooching off him bothered to show up - until the next day, when some of them swung by just long enough to grab leftovers and complain about there not being any turkey (my dad hates turkey and had asked for a ham) or any pumpkin pie. Talk about gall, LOL!

I've never done that, but I did see in the recent The Week Magazine the recipe for Butterflied Turkey with Cranberry-molasses Glaze. Apparently it's from ATK. I've cut and pasted that recipe here in case you are interested. (Hope this is ok.) Glazed roast turkey: A better path to the perfect centerpiece Forget trying to reproduce the photogenic turkeys you see on many magazine covers, said the editors at America’s Test Kitchen in The Cook’s Illustrated Meat Book. You have to glaze the bird to get that “gorgeously bronzed” look, and glazing a whole turkey is “a lot trickier than it looks.” A glaze typically turns the skin rubbery, and “most glazes slide right off.” If what you’re really after are optimum taste and texture, there is a solution: We recommend butterflying the turkey so the meat cooks more evenly, then roasting the bird twice: once at a moderate 275 degrees and then, to crisp the skin, at 450. The molasses glaze is brushed on at the end, resulting in crackly skin; a tangy-sweet coating; and “juicy, flavorful” meat. Recipe of the week Butterflied turkey with cranberry-molasses glaze ## One 12- to 14-lb turkey, neck, giblets, and tailpiece discarded ## Kosher salt and pepper ## 2 tsp baking powder ## 2 large onions, halved ## 3 cups apple cider ## 1 cup frozen or fresh cranberries ## 1⁄2 cup each molasses and cider vinegar ## 1 tbsp Dijon mustard ## 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger ## 2 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into 2 pieces Using kitchen shears, cut along both sides of backbone to remove it. Using your fingers, gently loosen skin covering breast and thighs. Using a skewer, poke holes in the fat deposits atop breast and thighs (4 to 5 holes per deposit). Rub bone side of turkey with 2 tsp salt combined with 1 tsp pepper. Flip turkey skin side up and rub 1 tbsp salt evenly under skin. Tuck wings under turkey. Push legs up to rest on lower portion of breast, and tie legs together with kitchen twine. Combine 1 tbsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, and baking powder in bowl. Rub salt mixture all over turkey skin. Transfer turkey to roasting pan, skin side up. To elevate turkey, place an onion half under each breast and thigh. Let turkey stand at room temperature 1 hour. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat to 275 degrees. Roast��"for roughly 21⁄2 to 3 hours��"until breast registers 160 and thighs register 175. Remove from pan and let rest 30 to 90 minutes. Thirty minutes before returning turkey to oven, increase oven temperature to 450. Meanwhile, bring cider, molasses, vinegar, mustard, and ginger to boil in medium saucepan. Cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced to 11⁄2 cups, about 30 minutes. Strain through mesh strainer into a liquid measuring cup. You should have about 11⁄4 cups. Transfer 1⁄2 cup glaze to a saucepan and set aside. Brush turkey with roughly 1⁄3 cup of glaze remaining in cup, transfer to oven, and roast 7 minutes. Repeat twice more, letting turkey roast on last round until skin is evenly browned and crisp (up to 10 minutes). Transfer turkey to carving board; let rest 20 minutes. Meanwhile, discard onions. Strain liquid from pan into fat separator (you should have about 2 cups). Discard fat. Pour liquid into saucepan with reserved glaze, bring to boil, and reduce until slightly syrupy, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in butter. Carve turkey, passing sauce separately. Serves 10 to 12. The Week November 21, 2014

I have concluded from this experiment that crisp turkey skin at Thanksgiving is not that important, because no one eats turkey skin in a way that lets them appreciate crispness. It isn't eaten as just skin in little pancakes, it is eaten dripping with gravy on a plate heaped with other stuff. But the experience was still interesting and informative. And now I have another use for my heat gun. As for the table setting - the next several dinner parties I give will see each person get one plate and one fork, and better yet one plate and strictly finger food. I'm tired of doing dishes. I'm also tired of the odor of turkey. I put the carcass, trimmings, wings, etc in my biggest stock pot and simmered until the liquid was reduced by 3/4. I'm going to make soup, and then not have turkey again for quite a while. Yup, I'm moving on to cute fluffy bunnies.