There is a turkey currently taking up residence in my fridge, and 10 apples waiting to become apple cider on top of the stove. My counters are covered in supplies for our upcoming dinner feast — stuffing mixes, green beans, cinnamon sticks, potatoes, pies. I think my kitchen, and my apartment on a whole, is happiest on the eve of hosting something special. Hosting in any capacity feels like such an intimate and personal way to shower people I love with love, and it’s something I’ve missed most over the last year.

This is the first year I will be spending Thanksgiving without my family, and it’s taken a minute to let the idea sink in. It’s only a year (fingers crossed) and how lucky we’ve been that we’ve gotten to spend every other holiday together until this point?

Thanksgiving is a cornerstone holiday in the Lanning household both in California, and since my move, in New York — where despite all the obstacles we still manage to produce a multi-course feast from the depths of my microscopic boat kitchen. For what my apartment lacks in counter space (I have one two foot counter) it makes up for in framed art and cat hair — which I’ll try my best not to get in your Thanksgiving meal.

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The other day I realized how few photographs I’ve taken this year. With so much time spent at home, my days can often feel like blurs of each other, differentiated slightly by the daily decisions to do yoga or watch Penny Dreadful after dinner, go for a walk before work or during a lunch break, see friends in the park on Saturday or Sunday morning. It’s been an outrageously eventful year and yet simultaneously so mundane in the same stroke.

This month I made it my goal to take a photo or write a journal entry everyday because as much as this year feels burned into my brain forever I know I’ll look back and wonder about the details that made up my days.

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