It’s almost Thanksgiving and I meant to do a longer post about making Thanksgiving dinner easier on everyone. But last week was lost to my own spontaneous trip away from my family with a friend for a few days. Bad, bad me. But here are my five best quick tips for making my Thanksgiving easier.

• Get out your serving dishes during the week before Thanksgiving and place post it notes inside each dish with what you’ll be putting in the dish. If you’re serving dinner on plates you don’t use everyday, get those out at the same time.

• Collect all the recipes you’ll need printing them from the internet, making copies of any in books or tearing them out of magazines and place them all together in a folder. You won’t waste time searching through several books trying to find what you need.

• Decide what you’re willing to outsource and what you must make yourself. This year my little family is having a quiet dinner just the four of us so instead of a whole turkey I ordered a boneless turkey breast through my local make and take cooking shop, The Chop Shop. It’s marinated and ready to throw into the oven about an hour before our dinner is served. They even offer an entire meal for pick up so you can cook it at home for just $100. We like spending the day making some of our favorite side dishes and desserts, but don’t mind buying our bread from the bakery and the main course from elsewhere.

• Have your kids create simple table decorations, like this grateful tree idea while the food is being prepared and adults are socializing.

• Create an easy centerpiece for your table the day before Thanksgiving. Real Simple has five 60 second ideas at their site. They also show you how to upgrade grocery store flowers into something stunning, I never knew carnations could look so lovely. There’s no reason to get all Martha about the table scape when you have these simple and beautiful options.

How do you make your Thanksgiving meal simpler and more fun? Besides going to someone else’s house for the festivities.