I’m hosting Thanksgiving this year. My first time hosting it, ever. I cooked my first turkey last Christmas and it was not pretty (don’t ask me how you can screw up a turkey. All I can say is that when it came time to carving it, it was something of a bloodbath). Anyway, I’m scouring the net looking for advice and I found this recipe guide (Into the Woods) on Yankee‘s web site. It’s cute and all but not all that practical. Here is part of the “game plan”:

Saturday or Sunday before Thanksgiving: Take a nice walk in the woods, looking up — and down — for handsome, unusual decorations that are Not Sold In Stores: striped-ivory fans of velvet-tooth mushroom growing stepped along a birch log; curls of wild grapevine; tawny fronds of cinnamon fern; fallen leaves in mottled shades of sandalwood and fawn. Think about how these things would look grouped with honey-colored beeswax candles, a few pale gourds, and the golden plumes of asparagus that are still waving over the sleeping garden.