Introducing a New Monthly Series: Welcome to the Neighborhood

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my obsession with consistency and routine. Whether a daily “Happiness is” post, a 2x weekly blog, or a monthly series, there’s something in my brain that loves a time-based plan. 

In 2024, I created “A Tangible Challenge,” where each month I took one in-person class about something I knew (little to) nothing about. The class had to be in person and it couldn’t be related to my professional career. I wanted to learn things unfamiliar. I wanted to create in ways that don’t come as naturally to me. I made pottery and learned about plants. I designed a mosaic lamp and dumplings. I took two candle classes and embroidered a shirt. I made soap and painted sea shells. I mixed perfume and crafted a stamp for print making. I learned basic woodworking and weaved textile art with a loom. It was awesome.

In 2025, I wanted to sit closer to home with two of my oldest hobbies—writing and baking. Each month, I choose a randomly-selected country and made a vegan version of a traditional dessert from that country—beignets from Gabon and spice cake from Grenada. Rice pudding from Colombia and puff puffs from Nigeria. I made shendetlie from Albania and mooncakes from China. Khaliat nahal from Yemen and aho from Palau. Irish soda bread and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines banana fritters. Surinamese bojo cake and Bosnia and Herzegovinian pita sa jabukama. I also made a point to work on an original, non-work, non-Smile Project piece of writing each month, forcing myself back into the habit of writing for the sake of writing. 

I have deeply loved these challenges. I love the cadence of a once-a-month endeavor. It’s easy enough to maintain even around holidays or an unexpected illness or a work trip. It’s joyful enough to want to continue even after the calendar turns. And while there’s still hundreds of countries I need to bake through, thousands of skills I could learn, infinite ideas worth exploring in prose, as we look into 2026, I wanted something new. 

That’s when the idea of neighborhood tours came to me. Earlier this summer, two girlfriends and I—in anticipation of the third moving from our neighborhood to another borough—made a list of things we wanted to do together while we all lived within blocks of each other. One of these was visiting another Queens neighborhood that one of the friends had previously lived in. We called it “Sunnyside Day” and it waited on a sticky July Saturday on my calendar with anticipation.

Because my friend had previously lived in the neighborhood, I essentially turned my brain off and let her show us around her favorite places. I was meeting them off a long run and was thrilled when our first stop was our friend’s friend’s restaurant—Bolivian Llama Party. Bolivian Llama Party is the only Bolivian restaurant in NYC and in addition to being run by the loveliest people you’ll ever meet, the food is unreal. I’m still thinking about the vegan jackfruit chola.

The next stop was Kora, a gorgeous Filipino bakery and cafe where, in my enthusiasm, I got a strawberry matcha latte. (For the uninitiated, I don’t do coffee or much caffeine at all so gambling on that in the afternoon was a choice and had me completely wired. It was delicious. I’d order it a thousand times over.)

We marveled at street art…walked to a park… browsed in a couple stores… perused a book exchange… ended at a brewery. 

By the time I got home I was completely exhausted and physically overjoyed. How fun it had been to go on a little date with my friends exploring a relatively new-to-me area. How fun to just mosey about, to be a tourist in my city. 

It was the memory of this perfect day that birthed the 2026 challenge. Each month this year, I will spend a day exploring a neighborhood in or around New York City that I am less familiar with. This automatically removes any former neighborhood I lived or worked in or have spent copious amounts of time in. If I don’t need directions to get there, it’s probably not the right fit.

I’m looking forward to my 12 dates this year—solo or with loved ones—as I give myself space and time to wander around somewhere new-ish to me. For those following along, I imagine you’ll need to get used to hearing about book stores and bakeries and park benches that you can sit at while eating a sweet treat and reading a new book. I’m a simple gal. 

As I sat down to write this introduction, having talked to a few friends about it already, I realized I needed a catchy name (or at least one shorter than last year’s “Bake Around the World; Write in the Kitchen”). 

This month marks ten years since I moved from Pittsburgh to New York City. A Pittsburgh girl at heart, I have a deep love for Mister Rogers and specifically his idea of being good to your neighbor. It is with that in mind that I am thrilled to introduce this year’s monthly series as “Welcome to the Neighborhood.” 

New York City has been good to me in the last decade. I’m continually honored to be its neighbor.  

And for the New Yorkers reading this: I have a long list of eligible candidates but I’d love to hear your thoughts—what neighborhood should I add to the list for 2026?