Neighborhood Building

While working on our own house is very important to us and brings us a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction, we believe it's even more important to be involved with our neighborhood as well. Over the past few years we've worked to bring neighbors together to discuss neighborhood issues, set goals and improve the area, and we recently got a big help from the city.

Over the summer we applied for a Neighborhood MiniGrant from Kansas City, and were awarded just over $1,600 to purchase and install neighborhood signs! Using a logo Chris created for a neighborhood welcome packet a while back, he pulled together specs for two-sided metal signs and brackets. Over the next few months we'll have 8 signs produced and installed throughout our little 4-block neighborhood.

Here are the details on the signs from our proposal, and we'll show you more once they are made.

To me, the best part about this whole process is the great friend we have made along the way. We have very cool neighbors - people of various ages and from different background - and we love to get together not just to talk about the neighborhood, but to spend time together and support one another. We've now had two block parties, with between 70 and 100 attendees at each, four neighborhood clean-up days where we have helped some of our elderly neighbors with yard work, and lots of great social times. Here are some highlights of our times together.

Neighborhood Clean-up/Dumpster Days:

(isn't that tall guy in the middle handsome?)

 
Block Parties:

 
(with some pretty sweet activities)

Neighborhood Garage Sales

Impromptu barbeques

Sometimes we have some pretty cute guests stop by for a hot dog - our nieces maintain an "honorary" resident status.