2011 Round-Up

I love year-end round ups, so I thought I'd do one of our own little blog in 2011.  What a year it's been!


I started a BLOG!
Or, as Heather at Dooce calls it, my Internet Website Blog Thing.  In April, I hit "publish" on my very first post and then introduced our little ranch.  I had actually initiated the blog about a year prior, but never could decide on a name.  Finally, I had a stroke of genius thanks to John Mayer (a favorite of Mr. Great Indoors and mine) and decided on The Great Indoors.  Perfect!  We celebrated our second houseiversary in July, thanking our lucky stars that we decided to take the plunge into home ownership.  It's not without its difficulties, of course, but it certainly keeps us busy!

Touring The Great Indoors
I gave the interwebs a virtual tour of our house, including the outdoors, the indoors (with a floor plan), the dining room, living room with a DIY bike rack, kitchen, laundry nook, the man cave, guest bedroom and bathroom (plus my guest bedroom closet office), and master suite.  I even shared my dreams for the guest bedroom and bathroom and some ideas for our kitchen, like painting our lower cabinets a darker color.  See the full house tour here.

The Great Outdoors
Even though our blog name might sound like everything we do is inside, we are proud to say that we had a successful second-year garden.  I talked a little bit about how our garden grows, sharing some things we learned after our first year and what we planted for our second go-round.  My step-dad helped us till up the space for the second time (thanks, J!), and we made sure to put in some soaker hoses to water efficiently all summer long.   Thank goodness we did, because we had a pretty dry summer.  Here's a link to everything about our summer 2011 garden, including weekly pictures of our garden's progress.  I wrote about our fall garden (which I later updated to our FAIL garden) and my gardening journal, which is still going strong, and we told our morning glory story.  We have a few humongous weeds, namely privet, that made me pine for a few natural lawn mowers (i.e., goats or sheep).  You can see our garden page here.

The Great Door Debacle of 2011
The biggest chapter of our summer (hell, of our year) was the doors.  Oh, the doors.  2011 will always be remembered as The Year of The Door.  The first snowball, in July, was replacing our aging deadbolts and doorknobs.  Somehow our new knobs conspired with a piece of pea gravel in our backyard to shatter our sliding glass door.  We thought we had finished the door, and even put in a new rug, painted the door casings, and painted the front and side doors a bright shiny red to complement our new door knobs.  We thought we were finished.  Until October, when Mr. GI accidentally knocked another rock through one of our brand new doors and we had to replace the window insert.  Just our luck.  Believe me when I say that we're covering up the doors for any power tools outside (maybe that's where those goats come in!).  Just for kicks, let's go through how much we doled out on doors this year.

• Defiant deadbolt set in satin nickel $32.97
• Rustoleum Metallic Satin Nickel $7.28
• Strike plate $2.07
• Masonite French door $372.36 (-$53 for a few defects)
• Kwikset door knob and Defiant deadbolt $39.53
• Trim materials $33.84
• Paint and supplies $22.41 + on hand
• IKEA Alslev rug $20
• A quart of interior/exterior Valspar Gloss cherry, pre-mixed $9.29
• Block sandpaper, 80 grit $3.47
• Liquid deglosser, $5.48
• Masonite French Door insert $153.12
• Total:  $648.82

Whoa.

Online Whimsies
I told you about a few things I had discovered online, including the self-watering plant pot (not pot plant as my husband some may have read it...), a story about the folks along the flooding Mississippi, and all of my favorite daily blog reads.  I talked a little bit about how equity is falling in the United States and shared my thoughts about that problem.  

ModCloth via DiggersList
Looks like this one was so popular it's sold out!

Fluffing Our Nest

I shared my recipe for granola (I'd love to know if any of you whipped up a batch!).  We contained ourselves with a few new products from The Container Store, including a cabinet rack to wrangle our under-cabinet junk.  I sorted through all our closets, including our pantry, coat closet, and linen closet, then made some plastic bag organizers to wrangle our extra grocery bags.

Crafting a Beautiful Home

I participated in the summer Pinterest challenge by creating a wax paper art installation on our guest bedroom window and making a summery dinner.  I decorated the house for fall and again for Christmas (in the living room and through the rest of the house).  I made over our dining room bookcase, taking out a few unnecessaries and getting it down to a manageable collection with some pretty stuff interspersed.

I kicked off DIY week in late October, which covered:

• Getting our house ready for Halloween
• Building a free wine rack
• Creating some paint chip art for the fall Pinterest challenge
• Whipping up some fall-colored bunting
• Sewing (and re-sewing and re-sewing) a few camp chair bags

  

Leaving the Nest
You came along with us on an impromptu trip to Savannah and drooled over the beautiful southern city's architecture.  Mr. GI and I had a date to the Design*Sponge book signing in downtown Athens, noting a decade of being together.  We took some time a week later to enjoy the fall leaves around town.

Random Tidbits
You learned about our home's grandpa, who may or may not still be living (undead?) in our back yard...  We wondered how much that Chewy was in the window (what a ham).  I told you a little bit about how to prepare your home for natural disasters, specifically tornadoes since those are prevalent in our area.  We hosted a few parties this year and shared our tips on hosting an awesome party for any other party fiends out there.

My most viewed posts:

1. August 2 The summer Pinterest Challenge, 351 pageviews!
2. November 2 The fall Pinterest Challenge, 319 pageviews
3. May 5 House Tour:  Living Room, 188 pageviews
4. April 19 House Tour:  Interior Floor Plan, 146 pageviews
5. August 11 DIY Bike Rack, 122 pageviews

Thanks to my readers (all five of you!) for making my year.  You really don't know how much fun it's been for me to share our adventures.  And, in the case of the doors, misadventures.  Oh, the doors.

Next up, 2012!!!  What are your plans for New Year's Eve?

P.S.  Check out the year-end round-ups at Brooklyn Limestone and Centsational Girl, two of my faves.
P.P.S.  Here's a hint at something we've been working on the last few days...  Anyone care to guess what project we'll be sharing next?