An update on the house hunt…

Both me and Mr. D agree on our #1 choice, the Shaker-style Farmhouse. It was treated poorly by its last owners and needs a lot of freshening up, but we see the potential in it. It was the right price and in the perfect location. We made an offer and all last week we worked on negotiating a deal. The shame in this story is that we lost the house.

What’s even worse than losing the house you’ve mentally moved-in to? It’s the fact that Mr. D and I do not agree on the runner-up properties that we have selected. The idea was if we don’t get the deal hashed out on property #1, we’ll make offers on #2 and #3. I like the house with three gables as my number two choice.

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Let’s say, hypothetically speaking of course (cough, cough), that you were a complete idiot and lost your engagement ring.

Thankfully the insurance gods smiled down at you and accepted your claim. Now you have a pocket full of money and a shit ton of options as to what to do with it.

Would you…

A. Create an exact replica of your lost ring? Why?

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Today is one of those days. I’m not particularly motivated to tackle my to do list. Nor am I ready to tackle the 2 hour lesson I need to finish before tomorrow morning. I’ve spent the morning thinking of the friends I have been blessed with, thinking of Hurricane Ida landing on the coast, and capturing the small details of this beautiful day.

My sweet Jesse, waiting out the morning with me.

A clothesline filled with baby clothing.

A self portrait.

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Last weekend Mr. D and I ventured off to “the country” in search of a house. It’s our intention to purchase something to live in full time until he finds work in New York City. I thought I’d share a sampling of the houses we toured over Halloween weekend.

The landscape is so serene. You’d never imagine that the hustle and bustle of New York City was only 90 minutes away.

The house above was complete country cottage perfection. You’d die if you saw how really, truly delightful it was. It had amazing 200 year old beams in the ceiling. There were beautiful grounds surrounding the property. It even had a guesthouse! The downside is that Mr. D had to bend over to fit through the doorways. When walking from the master into the living room he cracked his head on the door jam. As wonderful as it is, we can’t live like this - can we?

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My nephew recently turned two, and as he now lives halfway across the country, I relished my time with him while he and his mom were in town for a quick visit recently.  Over lunch, my sister reminded me of a certain disaster surrounding the baby shower I helped host for her and who am I to withhold a self-deprecating story from you ladies?

For those of you who know me, you know I like to farm out my brilliant ideas to people who can make them happen and then all is well with the world.  In prepping for my sister’s baby shower, however, I was going to need to do some of the projects myself.  Isn’t that the way it always seems to go?

First up, these ultra-cute tissue pom poms featured on Martha Stewart. She claims they are joyous bursts of color dancing above the table. And really, everyone needs some joyous bursts in their life . . . how could I resist? So I set to work to see just how easy these color-bursts were for us non-crafty people.

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Hello EAD Readers! It’s been sooooo long since I’ve posted. As in, 2.5 months long. During that time, we have moved out of our apartment and into temporary housing, moved to Granada, set up our home, adjusted as much as we can to the heat, shipped one of our dogs, and attempted to learn the language and the culture.

Wow.

E has been patient while I figure out what I want to blog about and how much I want to show you of our life here. While I live in one of the oldest and wealthiest cities in Nicaragua, much of the country is extremely poor. So my life isn’t always lighthearted and adventurous. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking, and I don’t think it would be fair to share only one side of my life here. But for the first few posts I’ll be sharing my home with you!

I haven’t had much of the “living” inspiration I thought I would have until the last two weeks. The home we moved into was not at all what I expected, and we’ve struggled with the idea of moving and finding a “prettier” place while we’re here. Staying and doing slight improvements to the house, while saving some serious cash, was our final decision. I’m really happy we decided to stay, even if it ends up being for half of our stay in Nicaragua.

One of the biggest benefits and drawbacks to living in Central America is the cost of living. Benefits include amazing organic locally grown produce at really low cost. Drawbacks include a serious language barrier and lack of easy access to things like home goods and craft supplies. I’m learning to adapt in two key ways.

First, I’ve realized that its better to have a general idea of what you need instead of something specific. This applies to everything from lamps to recipes. For example, we have a HUGE bookshelf that contains most of our goods (medicine, clothing, shoes, small electronics, books, toiletries, etc.). It’s functional right now, but not pretty. I really wanted baskets to organize everything, but no one we asked knew of a place in Granada to purchase baskets. We ended up taking a bus to a mall in Managua to pick up baskets for our bookshelves. They were horribly expensive, even for American standards, and I still am not completely satisfied with them. Two weeks later, I saw baskets made out of recycled material that weren’t quite what I had in mind, but were prettier and about 1/5 of the cost. I picked up one as a test, and love it.

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For those of you who don’t read ABCD Design on a daily basis, I thought I’d give you a little {Lemons to Lemonade} update. As you know, Mr. D lost his job with a London based financial firm at the end of May. Since nothing was exactly keeping us in the City during the month of August, we gave up our furnished rental apartment on July 31 and have been spending our time visiting our families in Knoxville and Detroit. Thank heavens, the job market is picking up and he has been getting interest from potential employers. One week ago last Saturday, we flew back to NYC after nearly 50 days away from the City. We packed our agenda with important work meetings and dinners out with our friends.

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It is a crazy feeling to be a “guest” in the town you consider your home. Over the weekend, we stayed at 60 Thompson. Great location and the common areas were beautiful! But I have to say … for such a nice hotel, our actual room was remarkably un-remarkable. We then moved up to Midtown and stayed at the Sheraton. For this portion of the trip we cashed in on our American Express points. When Mr. D and I got engaged, we enrolled with a Starwood American Express Card and paid for almost our entire apartment renovation with it. Since then, we have had endless amounts of “free” hotel nights which have come in handy when we want to get away for a long weekend, or in this instance visit NYC while he is interviewing! Seriously, it is one of the smartest things we’ve done as a couple. By the time our wedding anniversary rolls around each year we have at least 5 “free” nights - and we plan a “free” trip. Year one was a stay at the St. Regis Hotel in Rome and year two was ski-in, ski-out at the Westin on Whistler Mountain. Nice, no?

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I am not much of a chef (at all - I once set my kitchen on fire, which is a story that will have to wait for another time) and so I am always in need of simple, literally throw-it-together recipes for entertaining. Some of my favorites were the ones I created for my sister’s baby shower (we may as well keep strolling down memory lane a little longer). We were doing a mid-afternoon event and the menu would consist of light hors d’oeuvres. Did I mention it needed to be easy?

I saw these adorable Caprese Salad skewers in Jo Garten’s ever-so-stylish book, and figured I could handle that level of culinary genius and skill. I renamed them “Italian Refresca” and they consisted of cherry tomatoes, basil and mozzarella and were delish:

Then it hit me: everything would be on skewers! Sometimes I overwhelm myself with my own brilliance. Or maybe it’s just a matter of necessity being the mother of invention. Whichever. Among others, my favorites were a shrimp, honeydew and brie medley, a pound cake and strawberry combo, and this divine pairing of chocolate and fresh raspberries. The recipe for the latter is super hard, so see if you can’t keep up…

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My favourite six months of the year start in June and end up round about my birthday at the start of January. I love early summer and the excitement of the end of term, even though I don’t work in terms any more. I love summer drinks parties & balls & weddings. I love how it is usually hot in June and this year was no exception: a heat wave started on the day of our wedding and lasted for three whole weeks. I love the long drawn out evenings when swallows and bats start swooping around in the bluing sky. I love weekends sat in pub gardens, or the park, or lately, our own garden. Of the air ringing with conversation, with laughter. The taste of salt in the air, and on your face, of sand in the eyebrows and sun warmed skin after a day spent surfing, sailing or merely sunbathing. Of shorts, of flat leather sandals, of cold beer and cold Riesling and pimms and champagne and ginger beer.

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We’ve been living in our house for 9 months, but we’ve only really gotten to know our neighbors in the last 8 weeks. Perhaps because we moved in at the cusp of winter, when people spend more time indoors than socializing outside. So how did we finally learn who lives near us?

At the beginning of the summer, we received a note in our mailbox from the eldest son of our across the street neighbors. He wrote that he would be trying out for the high school football team in August and offered to mow our lawn for free as a way for him to get in shape. Now, we live on nearly 1/2 acre of property and were previously paying a lawn service to do the job. How could we say no to free?! Plus, this gave us the opportunity to talk to him weekly and learn about his two younger siblings and his parents. It also gave us an excuse to talk to his family when we saw them outside; we wanted to tell them what a good job he was doing mowing our lawn.

As a thank you for his hard work, we bought him a gift certificate to a local sporting goods store and took him on a field trip to the Air Force Base where my husband works, as he mentioned an interest in planes. The day of the excursion, his father and brother stopped by with handfuls of tomatoes and cucumbers from their garden. In return for their generosity, the next day we brought over a container of homemade salsa made with the tomatoes. And that is how that relationship began!

We met our next door neighbors because we were planning to build a fence to contain our small Maltipoo in the backyard and wanted to know if they were interested in splitting the cost with us for the fence that would divide our two properties. When we knocked on the door, they invited us inside and we had a lovely conversation not only about fences, but about what each of us did for a living and about their children. Turns out they were more than happy to contribute to the fence fund, and are now planning to use the same company to fence in the rest of their yard at a later date.

Perhaps we would have met the neighbors sooner if we had children the same age as theirs, but because we are a bit younger than both, we had to look harder to find things in common.

Do you have relationships with your neighbors? If so, how did they develop?

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