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In the years we’ve been together Max and I have tried to create traditions that will stay and grow with us throughout our lives. Some of them are fairly new (combining our two-week-apart birthdays into a big event, like whirlyball or a murder mystery party) and some of them are established (eating at our favorite hibachi restaurant after Christmas Eve church service), but the tradition we’ll absolutely carry on is Young People’s Thanksgiving.
Our version of Friendsgiving, YPT was founded in 2012. We had just moved into our first home two weeks prior and were barely unpacked. There was SO much to be thankful for in that season of our lives! We had a charming little house that was ours. I had quit my awful full-time job and was pursuing my dreams in the infant stages of Paper & Honey. Our wedding was only six short months away. Max had just celebrated his one year hire-versary working at a job he was and is so passionate about. Everything was big and beautiful and life was good. We wanted to say thank you.
Young People’s Thanksgiving 2012
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So, with half of the rooms in boxes still, we filled our house with friends. We gathered around our first “real” piece of furniture, a dining room table that Max had finished the day before, and shared a meal. Max deep fried a turkey, I made stuffin’ muffins and played bartender, and guests brought sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie and everything that makes Thanksgiving so, so good. We ate off of plastic Target plates from my college days and some friends sat in ugly metal folding chairs. Our green walls weren’t decorated and I worried about the fact that the black stove didn’t match our new stainless steel refrigerator. We drank sparkling spiked cider and danced where there wasn’t enough room and sang too loudly. It wasn’t an Anthropologie dinner party but it was perfect.
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YPT 2014 was celebrated this past Saturday and it was absolutely wonderful. The fridge still doesn’t match the stove, the walls still aren’t white, but our home is lived and loved in. It has more Max-built furniture and photographs from our wedding and artifacts from the last event we threw. It has Paper & Honey artwork and too many dog toys. Better still, we had friends from all over — including Ohio, Minnesota, and Illinois — that came to Michigan to celebrate this tradition with us and be thankful for each other.
And I am so, so thankful. Life is good, friends. It really is. xo
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Photos one & three from my Instagram.
