Russian Neighbor Roulette

I was planning to do the requisite 'Things I'm Thankful For' Thanksgiving post. You know, the one where I tell you I'm thankful for God, my husband, my family, my friends, my health, my boring job in a crappy economy, my house, my dogs, Starbucks, chocolate and Steve Madden shoes.

Yawn. Bored yet?

Yeah, so I was planning to do that post until Nate came home from a run this afternoon and found this on our roof.


Know what I'm thankful for this year? Neighbors who start silly Orange Traffic Cone Wars. Who throw fabulous Halloween costume parties and teach the Southerners to play Euchre (and then let them win!). Who take in your mail while you're on vacation and will check your house for dead bodies when they don't see you for more than three days straight. Who share with you the holy grail of dessert recipes and give you plastic forks on move-in day when you have no idea what box the silverware is packed in.

We kind of hit the jackpot in the Neighbor Department.

Tuesdays at the Table

I nearly died of excitement when I got my hands on this recipe Sunday night. As in literally, I gasped so loudly, the driver nearly ran off the road!

A little background - When we live in Tennessee, we had the most amazing neighbors, Clint and Gwen. They loved us, loved our furbabies and ran a mean grill. One night for dessert we had this dish Clint's mom had made; they called 'orange stuff'. OMG. It was divine. I ate. I raved. I ate some more.

From then on, any time Clint's mom made orange stuff, he'd divide it up and send me home with some. If I heard there was orange stuff to be had, I lit up like a Christmas tree and made a mad dash for their fridge. Eventually, Clint's mom got wise to my game, and started doubling the recipe - making me my very own container of orange stuff.

When we moved to the mid-west, I tried in vain several times to make it myself. It didn't look hard, I knew the basic ingredients, but I never hit on the right combination. In fact, I couldn't even get close. No orange stuff for me for over two years....

....until Sunday! We went bowling with the neighbors (long story short - I got beat by a five-year-old - twice!). On the way home, they start talking about having some orange fluff when they get home. Orange fluff? Could it be......

Curiosity piqued, I asked what was in it. 'Oh, oranges, pineapple, cool whip....oh, and cottage cheese.' And that was when I knew! (And gasped so loud, they all thought I was having a heart attack).

ORANGE STUFF!!!!!

I found my holy grail! Ten minutes later, I was inhaling that orangey goodness with one hand, while copying down the recipe with the other. I can't wait to make a big fat bowl of my very own this weekend.

___________________________________________________

ORANGE STUFF

Ingredients:
24 ounce container of small curd cottage cheese
12 ounce container of Cool Whip, thawed
6 ounce package of orange Jello
2 - 11 ounce cans of mandarin oranges, drained (22 ounces total)
20 ounce can of pineapple chunks, drained
Optional ingredient: mini-marshmallows

Instructions:
1. In a large bowl, combine Jello powder and Cool Whip well.
2. Mix in the cottage cheese.
3. Stir in the pineapples and oranges.
4. Stir in marshmallows, if desired.
5. Chill overnight.

Serves about 10. Or serves Sara two helpings per day for a week.

__________________________________________________

I know it sounds kind of gross when you read it, but trust me - you'll love it. To make it healthier, you can substitute low-fat cottage cheese and low-fat Cool Whip. Enjoy!

White Trash

Dear Neighbors Three Houses Over,

Trash Day is Monday. Today is Thursday. In case you hadn't noticed, your trash can is still at the end of your driveway.

How could you not notice, though, considering I have personally watched you maneuver your vehicle around it no less than six times in the last four days. Also, you have been within 10 feet of it the last three mornings when you picked up your newspaper. (Congratulations, by the way, on that accomplishment - I think it's a record for you!).

I understand that it has been raining for four days straight but the rest of us braved the rain so that our street does not look like a trailer park. We would appreciate if you would do the same. Perhaps you could send one of your three able-bodied children to do the dirty work? What good is having kids anyway if you can't force them into manual labor, right?

Sincerely,
Sara

Ringing in the New Year....literally

Okay, maybe it's more like 'hooping' in the New Year but that doesn't have nearly the same ring to it.

Nate and I had an awesome time at the neighbor's NYE party last night, eating yummy desserts and kicking butt at Euchre (well, Nate was kicking butt - I was just happy not be dead last). We got home around 1am and Nate decided it was time to bust out his skills on my new Wii Fit (thanks, Mom and Dad!). I promise, he was perfectly sober just inexplicably hyper.

Let me tell you, there is no funner way to bring in the New Year than watching your husband Wii Hula Hoop in his boxer shorts. I was dying laughing. I didn't even need to 'work out' on the Wii because I got plenty of ab exercise laughing hysterically at his hula hooping efforts.

What could be better than an extra hour of sleep tonight?

An extra hour of sleep AND beating Nate at the neighborhood Euchre tournament tonight! I might not have been the night's big winner but I beat my husband and that is all that matters in our house.

That's it, I retire from Euchre. Winner...me.

Afternoon delight

Just when you think you couldn't like your new neighbors anymore, they bring you cupcakes. Jill delivered six big fat vanilla cupcakes to our doorstep this afternoon.

I have been craving cupcakes for the last three days, and briefly considered buying some yesterday at the grocery store. But seeing as how I have zero self-control around vanilla cupcakes, I decided baking 20 cupcakes was probably not a good idea.

Apparently God does reward self-control because Jill appeared like a angel sent from Heaven. Well, actually, I wasn't home when she came but I bet you she had a halo and a pair of wings.

Now I just hope I have enough self-control left not to scarf all three of my yummy cupcakes in a single night!

Hello, my name is Stupid.

If you've been reading for awhile, you know that we have already met many of our neighbors and were excited to find out how nice they all are. Jill brought us spinach dip and chips on Saturday, Kriste brought cookies on Monday and Renee graciously gave me plastic utensils at 9:00pm on Saturday so we didn't have to eat Chinese with our fingers.

But I really put their neighborliness to the test yesterday morning. I took Oliver and Lola for their morning walk and managed to lock us out of the house. The garage door we exited through is locked. As is the front door, the back door and all twenty-five windows. And I don't have house keys or car keys or either of my two cell phones. And I am wearing Nate's yucky yard shoes.

What's a girl to do? Nearly everyone on the block works, at least the ones that we have met. I am a mess from moving all morning and I have two frantic dogs who are waiting anxiously for their treats. Then God smiled on me, and sent Jill's mother outside with little Zack. I'm sure she didn't know what to make of this stranger walking up and asking to use her phone, but she graciously gave me her cell phone and let me call Nate. And when he didn't answer, she volunteered her husband to drive me the twenty minutes to Nate's office to pick up the keys so that I wouldn't have to wait for him. Half an hour later, wearing zero makeup, a dog-hair-covered sweatshirt, and sandals that are three sizes too big, I am knocking on the door of Nate's building begging to be let in! I must have looked like a homeless person to the poor guy who let me in. Fortunately I didn't run in to anyone I actually know from his office and only took a mild ribbing from Nate while I snatched the keys and fled in embarrassment (it probably helped that there was already someone in his office - he had to be nice to me!).

An hour and a half after we set out for our walk, we finally got back into the house. I know that I will be obsessively checking that garage door lock for weeks to come!

Cleaning House

Nate and I have been busily cleaning and packing things up in the apartment and the new house got a thorough professional cleaning yesterday, too. I seriously don't know how we still have so much stuff even after two moves in the last year. I look around and wonder how the heck we're going to make this move on our own. That is going to be one L-O-N-G weekend!

While the apartment looks like a hurricane blew through, the house is looking awesome! I got to go out twice yesterday, once in the afternoon to have the windows measured for blinds and then again in the evening with Nate. The front door and the garage doors have been painted, the house number was put up and the mail box is at the end of the driveway. The outside is so close to being done; just a little grading and sodding left.


Nate talked to the sod guy yesterday and I think we've decided just to pay them to sod the backyard for us. We were planning to do it ourselves but it ended up costing less than we expected for them to do it. We've got enough on our plates and it's one more thing to mark off our 'To Do' list.

The appliances were delivered on Tuesday and they look great. The dishwasher still has to be anchored down and pushed a little further back but other than that they all look great.



We've started looking at things pretty carefully and critically in order to prepare for the pre-closing walk through on the 24th. There are a few little things we've noticed that we want to make sure they address before we close. They have done such a great job so far, they will probably catch a lot of them before we even get to the walk-through but we are taking notes just in case.

We finally got to meet Jill's husband, Will. He seems like a really nice guy and gave us a couple of hints on moving ourselves and movers we might want to try for the big stuff. Jill came out to say hey and tell us how excited she and Renee are for us to finally be there. It's so nice to know that our neighbors are already looking forward to having us!! She stayed outside talking with us for a full ten minutes before she realized she'd left poor Zack sitting in his highchair waiting on his dinner!!

Check out more pics of the house on Flickr.

It's a small world after all....

A few months ago I posted about this great recycling website called FreeCycle. Over the last two weeks I have been using FreeCycle to collect boxes for our upcoming move. On Wednesday there was an offer of 30+ boxes available in Noblesville off of 191st, which just happens to be the same street our new neighborhood is on. Being that 191st is not a super developed street, I thought, 'Wouldn't it be funny if these people lived in our new neighborhood?'.

Turns out the world is even smaller than I thought - the people actually live on our street! Kriste and Matt are five houses up from us on the right and they just moved in a month ago. We had to make two trips to get all 30+ boxes so we got to chat with them quite a bit yesterday. They seem really nice and their little boy Jack is really cute.

It's exciting to think we might finally get to make friends with our neighbors. We had such great neighbors in Knoxville but not so much in Boston or Indy. Working from home has a lot of perks, but it severely limits my opportunities to make friends. Sadly, the baristas at Starbucks are about the closest friends I've made in nearly 10 months here!

It's a brick house!

The brick laying crew worked a twelve hour day Saturday and they are still only about half way done! Man that's a lot of brick! We are very pleased with the color though. It seems a little more brown than we expected but I think when they put the siding on this week the red will come out a little bit more.




The painter started on Friday. When we visited Sunday, only the loft and the master suite weren't painted. The ceiling was plastered sometime in the last week, too. I am not quite sure why they do the ceiling first and then spray paint the walls, because there is Mushroom Cap paint all over the beautiful white ceiling! But seeing as how they do this every day, I will trust that they know what they are doing. :)




We also got to spend a little more time with the neighbors to our left, Ray and Renee. Ray was out grilling hamburgers when we pulled up on Sunday. We told him we had just come from the late service at White River Christian Church (where they attend) and thanked him for the recommendation. He mentioned that they were going to be starting a Small Group in the neighborhood if we were interested in attending. So we went inside for a few minutes to trade phone numbers and they also took us on a tour of the house (the same floor plan as ours). This was the first time we have actually seen a completed Georgetown and we left even more excited than we were before! Not only do we get a beautiful house but we couldn't have picked nicer neighbors.