Friendsgiving: The Day Before

Our day on Saturday started and ended with thoughts about Friendsgiving. We were both so excited to host, but I was a nightmare in terms of preparation. I wanted everything to be as ready as possible so the day could go smoothly. We did get most things ready. The day didn’t go that smoothly. Typical Thanksgiving problems.

I made Sean get up early so we could run a couple of errands. These included getting a few food and cookware bits, looking for a place we could buy Cards Against Humanity, and sorting out the centrepiece…of course the centrepiece issue still hadn’t been solved and I was desperate for something that would look good…anything.

We went into town to drop off our map at the framers before starting the day. We took it to Clapham Picture Framers and they were so helpful in finding the best way to do the frame and helping us pick the customizations. When we finished, we walked through the market they had on the same street. It was your typical fruit/veg/cheese/meat market and it’s extremely close to our house so we decided we would try to go more often to get some nice groceries. Then, we came across the flower shop on the end. They had exactly what I wanted for the centrepiece – orange, fall-looking little bobble flower things (honestly the best way I know to describe it). We knew we would be running around town, though, and did not want to be lugging flowers around, so decided we would get them later in the day. Mistake #1.

Then, since we were in the area and it was open, we thought it would be a good idea to stop at the bank and finish our account set up. Mistake #2. The bank took forever (typical) and it wasn’t even a result of a line, but rather that the girl at the counter wanted her colleague to help us instead of herself. When her colleague did not become available after over a half hour of waiting, she then decided she would do it. How kind of her.

Anyway, the delay at the bank meant we were behind on everything else and we had a deadline to get home in order to accept a grocery order. We went on our way to find Cards Against Humanity – we had ordered online but it was not going to arrive on time – and couldn’t find it anywhere. So we gave up and moved on.

My colleague then called at the worst possible time letting us know that he was on his way with the table and chairs we were borrowing. Considering we were mid-shop, we frantically thought through how we could reorganise our day. The flowers were the first thing to get sacrificed (though I wanted to cry), and we ended up buying a nice fall-themed bouquet at Marks & Spencer. We ran around Debenhams for the last things we needed and then met my colleague.

[The backup flowers – not a bad alternative]

After unloading the tables and chairs, I started making a list of the things we still needed so Sean could run out. He ran to the shop while I waited and accepted our grocery order. We ran around the house cleaning things up, Sean cleaned the tables outside, and I double and triple checked that we had everything we needed.

[This is the cleanest our bedroom has ever and probably will ever be]

We rewarded ourselves by stopping by a friend’s birthday party and a ping pong bar in the city and reuniting with a couple of ex coworkers, but did not dare allow ourselves a late night – the prep had to start again the next day!