We happened to buy our house in the Longfellow Neighborhood. We had never heard of Longfellow, our real estate agent certainly didn't mention it although it does show up on google maps. The second weekend we lived in our duplex, there was a walking tour of the neighborhood and we met Leslie, the president of the
Longfellow Neighborhood Association. Perfect timing to meet new neighbors and learn about all the activity around our new home.
One thing I love about the LCA sense of community is the generosity of time and goods. Since getting involved with LCA, we have been offered a piece of drywall to patch our wall, traded lemons, spent time learning about neighbor's chickens and gotten rid of landscaping rocks better used in someone else's yard. Right now I'm borrowing Amanda's food dehydrator. We'd never even met Amanda before, but when I asked the LCA group if I could borrow one, she offered!
I recently learned about how easy it is to dehydrate fruits and vegetables at a
City Slicker Farms workshop. So of course I wanted to try it at home. We grew these cherry and sungold tomatoes and now we'll be enjoying them all winter! After dehydrating, you can either store them in a jar packed with olive oil or simply put them in a jar or ziplock in the freezer.
Our friends have great neighbors too--neighbors with an apple tree. I dried about a dozen apples including some dusted with cinnamon. They are tart but tasty. These will definitely not last all winter!
I can't find a before photo, so here is a shot of the mirror from the staging before we bought our place. And you'll notice it's actually the mirror image (ha!) of our bathroom because it is from Katie and David's house. The first step of course was removing the mirror. Unfortunately the anchor/screw holes were not covered by the new medicine cabinet, so there will be patching and painting in our future. 
