Good Neighbors and Garage Sales

Guess what just got delivered to our front door? Warm out of the oven, even? Yup, a strawberry pie! Since losing my sense of taste forever 9 years ago I'm the first to admit that my interest in cooking and baking has taken a permanent nosedive. Food isn't all that interesting to me anymore. Me neighbor Sharon loves to cook and bake and can and freeze and...well, you know. A Domestic Diva of the finest kind. She's taken pity on my Dear Hubby and daughter and whenever she goes on cooking/baking binge, something good manages to work its way over to our house. She makes delicious homemade pickles and jams and even crabapple jelly. Her baking, especially around Christmas, is to die for. She makes baklava that melts in your mouth. Wonderful cookies. Fudge. Whenever she and her husband Alex go to visit relatives in Yakima, Washington, they give us some of whatever they've gotten as far as produce goes, too...fresh peaches, asparagus, apricots, plums. They have a grape arbor in their yard and supply us with grapes as well. Plus Sharon's always been generous with sharing plants from her yard and has helped me out with baby items when Dylan and Cooper were born...things her own grandkids had outgrown. You couldn't ask for better neighbors. The way we try to reciprocate is to take in the mail, water the garden, and keep an eye on the house whenever they travel. I'd be afraid to give her something I'd cooked since I'd have no idea what it tasted like, haha! I season whatever I make by memory and I guess I do it ok because Dear Hubby and Kaitlin say my macaroni salad still tastes as good as it ever did. The rest of our neighbors are great as well...can't complain about any of them...but Sharon especially goes the extra mile.

Yesterday as I was out walking Chloe dog in the morning I saw a "Garage Sale" sign along the way and took a little detour down one of the streets to see what they had for sale. I ended up hitting pay dirt. It was a couple of young moms whose kids are now older than Dylan so they were selling a lot of baby clothes and items. The clothes didn't interest me because Cooper has inherited all of Dylan's baby clothes and he'd had so many he didn't get a chance to wear a good portion of them before he'd outgrown them. But the mothers also had some carseats, infant seats, nursery monitors, etc. But what caught my eye was a Fisher Price Take-Along baby swing. It looked brand new...even the fabric seat didn't look like a baby had ever sat in it tho I know one did because the mom told me everything on it works. I also found a Play Doh Activity Table that had new cans of Play Doh and all the little doo-dads that go along with it for making different shapes, crayons, and felt-tipped pens and paper. I also found something for me, too...two ceramic pots, a brass star on a pedestal, and a soapstone statue of a man and woman. I put the pots on the front porch steps and the star and statue are tucked in amongst some of my flowers for 'yard art'. Don't you just love it when you hit a really good garage sale and come away knowing you got some great bargains and it was money well spent?! I didn't have enough money on me to begin with, but the moms were more than happy to hold everything for me while I got Chloe dog home and made a quick trip to the bank to get some more cash out.

Otherwise, it's been a quiet weekend.

The best kind.