Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Our neighborhood is amazing. Seriously. We were plopped down right into the middle of the most amazing community of people. Within 2 days of moving in, we had visits from most of the neighbors. These visits all included a gift of some sort. And we were also given a spreadsheet of everyone's names, address, phone numbers, kids names and ages, etc, etc. Now such a barrage can leave you feeling either very welcome or very scared. I chose to feel welcomed and it was the right choice. These people are amazing. They pet sit for each other. They baby sit for each other. They carpool together. They even attend school plays for each other's kids. While we were out of town, one of our neighbors regularly came over to see to our cats and another neighbor was so sweet to plow snow off of our driveway so we wouldn't have to shovel the drive when we returned home from our holiday travels. If I haven't mentioned it before, these people are great!

So tonight, we are having our neighborhood Christmas party. It's a tad on the late side because the family hosting the party was out of town for Christmas. It will be fun to hang out with everyone and let the kids run off steam together. I am in charge of bringing salad for 30 people. And drinks. Not a problem. I guess they felt the newbie in the hood should be given the easiest of tasks. We are also exchanging gifts, but they have to be homemade/handmade (is there any difference between those two?). Now this revelation alone had Michael rethinking our love of our neighbors. But me, I love it. Nothing gets me energized like a new project. Maybe that makes me a grandma, but I really don't care. I love to be crafty. The problem for me isn't the idea of doing crafty gifts, it's the time frame. We were out of town when the instructions were sent out. This means that I only had 1 week to come up with 2 homemade gifts--one from me and one from Michael. So with very little time to plan, I utilized my skills of creating frozen dinners. (Skills I honed to perfection thanks to my Katy friends and all their precious babies!) So I made a complete meal from appetizer to dessert. It is frozen and ready for a simple reheat and eat. I figured one night free of cooking was a pretty good gift. But the dilemma was in figuring out how to wrap a gift like that. Who really wants to open up a gift box and find a frozen lasagna? So I've made my own little menu to wrap. I figure they can open the menu and then be presented with the actual food later.

And the coolest part is that we don't have to transport this meal in a cooler. Nope. The temperature outside is an accommodating 3 degrees so simply leaving the food in the back of our van will keep it nice and frozen. Love it!

Okay, I am off to put the finishing touches on Michael's handmade gift. (like that?) And I also have some baking to do. Yum!

Cheers!