Hormel Gatherings Party Trays

I received free product in exchange for my honest review

Thanksgiving was as what kids are saying these days “lit” in this house. We had a little guy celebrating his first Turkey Day, an overly excited 4 year old who couldn’t wait for family to arrive including my 86 year old Grandmother and I had been awake since way earlier than my normal rising time to get this meal done. I usually cook a whole turkey; but this year we decided on just a breast which I had never prepared before in my life.

I also knew that the following day meant another gathering, this time at the aforementioned Grandmother’s house for some pre-gameday appetizers, pizza, celebrating my Mom’s birthday and visiting with family who was in town from Georgia. I didn’t know if I was coming or going yesterday morning but I knew that everyone in Virginia had a game day preference for last night’s Virginia vs Virginia Tech game. Virginia Tech had traveled up to Charlottesville (which is only about 45 minutes or so from us) to play and it was a hot topic of conversation. Our community is such a mix of both teams (while my house stays true to our long-time roots and we are Mountaineers).

Anyway, so the morning yesterday was pure chaos. I think that both of my boys were still just on a holiday high and I didn’t want to cook. Thank goodness for Hormel Gatherings Party Trays!! Y’all these things are amazing. I didn’t have to dirty a dish, I didn’t have to get out tons of fancy serving spoons/forks or anything else. I literally opened packages and emptied them into the provided tray. That was it! I then tossed the inner packages into the trash and we were ready to roll.

Keeping little fingers out of these until meal time was a totally different story, but hey it happens!

Check out this tray of food!! Who doesn’t love this stuff? I know we go crazy for it, especially the pepper jack cheese and pepperoni. Adding in the crackers is just a bonus all around and the pitted olives were the perfect addition to something that already didn’t need anything else, but this put it over the top.

Having this amazing party tray saved my day, including the ounces of sanity that I had left after the previous day.

Here is my little table set up (yes we used leftover Thanksgiving plates). The sweet tea was flowing, conversation was amazing and before we knew it game time was upon us. Virginia lost as most had predicted, while it is always nice to wish for the home team to win and we went to bed with full stomachs and full hearts. Although I meant to take a LOT more photos we were so wrapped up in some of my family just meeting our baby for the first time and others who had not seen him since he was a tiny infant and of course entertaining our party animal Jack. Sometimes it is nice to just live life in real time without a camera.

Samantha

Samantha hails from Virginia and is a proud wife to a retired Deputy Sheriff and mother to two amazing little boys named Jack & William. A veteran product reviewer; Samantha has been reviewing products for 8 years and offers high quality product reviews with original photography.