A warm corner

COSTA MESA — It’s not every day that you get to share warm cider and cookies with your neighbors. But for residents of the Halecrest community, it’s at least an annual event.

Linda Brumbaugh and Leslie Connell took another neighbor’s idea of getting residents together and transformed it into the popular “cider on the corner” get-together to celebrate the holiday season.

The event at Parnell Place and Loren Lane reminds Mike Brumbaugh, president of the Halecrest Homeowners Assn., of his childhood growing up in Stowe, Pa.

“We would have neighbors coming over with cakes and cookies and this made me remember how it was back there,” he said. “It gives the neighborhood a small-town atmosphere.”

Neighbor Karen Thurston, a full-time caregiver to her 91-year-old mother, was glad to have an opportunity to meet other residents and to have them get to know her.

“I have been wanting to get acquainted with the other neighbors,” said Thurston, who worries that they don’t understand why she talks loudly to her mother, who suffers from hearing loss.

About 50 people turned up for cider on the corner, with cookies and kids in tow. There was hot apple cider and coffee along with plates heaped high with cookies on the Connells’ front lawn.

And Bob Curtis, who has played the neighborhood Santa Claus for the last three years, handed out candy canes to children, including his own granddaughter Samantha Connell.

“It’s a wonderful neighborhood,” Curtis said of the Halecrest community. “They help keep the community spirit in the area and most importantly, a neighborly feeling.”

The Bastian family of Huntington Beach visited their grandmother’s home in Halecrest to do just that.

Cheryl Bastian and her 10-year-old son Bryce accompanied her mother Norah Mullikin to the cider event and later walked around the neighborhood with other residents to look at homes decorated with Christmas lights.

“It’s like an old-fashioned community get-together,” Cheryl said. In previous years, the group sang carols as they walked around the neighborhood to look at the lights.

This year, the judges will ride in golf carts to decide winners of a home decorating contest — winners to be announced next week.