It’s officially November, which means it’s 100% okay to start pumping yourself up for the Food Olympics you’ve been training all year for. Or, in other words, Thanksgiving. A great way to prepare yourself for the mass amount of food you will be eating over the holiday, as well as prepare yourself for the festivities of Thanksgiving, is to have a “Friendsgiving” with your Le Moyne pals. Here are some cool tips for your awesome meal and ambiance.

Shop for your meal fixings at Aldi’s: Aldi’s doesn’t get the credit it deserves. I feel like a lot of people assume that because it is highly discounted, that automatically means the food is not of good quality. That just isn’t the case. You can get so much food for about half the cost of what you could get it for at Target. While there are some things I might not get at Aldi’s (I’m looking at you weird, greens section), you could get most of your staples for a Friendsgiving feast like rolls, cranberry sauce, stuffing, or even a small turkey.

Paint/write on pumpkins: If you would love to carve pumpkins but live on campus and don’t want to have to be the one to clean up all of the pumpkin guts, then this would be a great alternative for you. It’s also fun and usually inexpensive to do, since almost everybody knows someone who has markers and paint (it’s me). So, while you’re chilling with all of your friends waiting for your food to come out of the oven, or your pizza to arrive, bedazzle those pumpkins!

Use your microwave: I am honestly a big proponent of microwaves. I know I go on about them constantly, but as students, we are usually doing millions of different things at a time. I know adding ‘cooking for my buddies’ to that list may be the last thing you want to do, but you can make more delicious dishes in a microwave than you think. Not sure how much time you’ll save, but you’ll surely save your energy. I found a bunch of cool microwave food recipes on Pinterest (because I’m secretly an old woman) and I definitely want to try a bunch of them out. You could make microwaved carrots, green beans, cornbread, as well as the dessert all in the microwave. I know I’ve written a whole article on mug recipes for the microwave, but the amount of amazing looking mug cakes on Pinterest always blows my mind. A wide array of mug cake options would definitely be at my Friendsgiving.

Watch a Holiday movie: I know a bunch of people don’t want to get into Christmas too early but let’s face it, Christmas season starts the second week of November. It’s also always fun to watch a holiday movie with a good message that gives you all of the feelings. You could watch your favorite holiday movie that you always watched with your biological family that you are now watching with your “friend family” (aww!!). Of course, if you decide to have a Friendsgiving movie marathon, “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” should be on the top of the list.