Pre Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving always comes at the perfect time of year! It's a great opportunity to spend time thinking about everything we are grateful for and to really count the blessings in our life. There are so many things I am thankful for its hard to write them all down or even remember them, but my top 5 things I am grateful for this year are:

Good Health |  Family | The Gospel | Amazing Friends |The Opportunity to Chase My Dreams|

Every year for Thanksgiving my entire extended family travels to St. George and we spend the weekend together going to movies, shooting guns, 4-wheeling, going on hikes, and having a great Thanksgiving feast. 
However, the Sunday before my mom always cooks a Thanksgiving meal with the recipes she learned from her mother and its one of my favorite meals she makes. I had the privilege of decorating the main dining table for this wonderful meal. 

Theme: Simplistic Natural Harvest 

[Because we did dinner family style, I needed space on the table for the food dishes - so I tried to keep the decorations simple. I wanted to evoke fall's abundance so I used pinecones, fall leaves, twigs and burlap to help give it that rustic feel] 

My mom has amazing china & table clothes for just about anything. All the plates, silverware, glasses and napkins were hers. 

I found a great (free) template from TheTomKatStudio for place cards to keep with my simple yet rustic feel.

Coming up with a centerpiece was more of a challenge. I don't particularly love tall centerpieces in intimate settings because I feel like you can't have a conversation with the person across from you. Twigs and Pinecones were the perfect combination and allowed me to add a lot of special details. (also because the craft stores put away their Fall decor with Halloween and only Christmas decorations were out)

My mom makes THE BEST Homemade Apple Pie - which is a recipe that her mother passed down to her. 

I wanted to feature this wonderful pie and so I created a "Pie Display" area in the kitchen. 

These are just a few of the great things we had at dinner - these rolls are also made from scratch and were delicious! My mother is an INCREDIBLE COOK!

Almond Cranberry Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Spinach

Chopped Cabbage 

Green Onions

Cranberries

Candied Almonds

Grated Parmesan Cheese

Brianna's Homestyle Poppy Seed Dressing 

It was a delicious homemade meal and I seriously credit it all to my mother! She has always been an amazing cook and one day I will learn to be as great as she is. 

Maybe next year I will make some of the food. 

I am thankful for a great year and the opportunity to celebrate this holiday with loved ones.

xoxo

S

Topic: Hashtagging for TV

What is a hashtag and what is it used for?

According to www.hashtags.org a hashtag is “an easy way for Twitter users to categorize Tweets that share a common topic or belong to a particular group. The hashtag is used to highlight keywords or topics within a Tweet, and can be placed anywhere within a post.”

Hashtags are very helpful when you want to search Twitter for specific topics.

“Any Tweet posted on a public account can be searched by anyone, and posters often use hashtags to help direct searches to their posts. For example, Twitter users can elect to follow all Tweets that include the hashtag #WhiteSox to receive updates about the Chicago White Sox baseball team.”

I personally love hashtags and use them frequently. The most interesting thing I’ve noticed is that TV shows and movies are often using hashtags in their advertising to help create a “buzz” about the specific scenes or the premiere of a movie. Viewers enjoy the synchronized interactive experience they have created on Twitter.

The ABC Family Show, Pretty Little Liars, is the perfect example of this. While each new episode is airing, they show about 3-4 new hashtags that they want viewers to use in their tweets. This has made Pretty Little Liars the “#1 all-time for most comments for a cable drama season 3 premiere, according to Bluefin Signals. The ABC Family series' June 5 season premiere racked up a record 534,000 tweets during airtime." (source)

The sharp spikes in this graph correspond to the East Coast airings of new episodes. 

This next graph shows the tweeting zoomed in – showing that the majority of tweets about the show happen in the first 15-30 minutes before and after the airing of a new episode. 

Twitter.com keeps track of popular hashtags from the years. Some popular hashtags from 2012 include - #nowplaying, #throwbackthursday, #gop2012, #romney, #familyguy, #nfl, #thehungergames, #rickross, #hiphop, #ihop, #starbucks, #at&t, #iphone, #instagram, and #syria. 

Hashtags are a great way to search for any topic to find out what people are saying about it. They aren't only used on Twitter but also Instagram, Blogs and other social media outlets.