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!

We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

I'm taking a few weeks off to enjoy family time and the holiday season.  In the meantime, what are your plans for Christmas?  We have a ton of family, so our holidays are usually travel-filled.  Do you already have your decorations up?  Any lights up outside?  Here's one of our favorite area houses.  The folks who run the Bluelights house, as it's called, ask everyone who stops by to donate to Toys for Tots.  If you can believe it, there are 100,000 (mostly LED) lights on the house, lit from sundown to midnight every night.  Wonder if they ever get any sleep!

Bluelights this year (www.bluelights.org)

We put up outdoor lights our first Christmas here, but since then haven't had the energy to do it again.  Certainly not as much energy as these folks have!  If you're ever in the area, definitely check out this house and remember to bring a toy to donate.   They mention on the website that donations are down this year, so Mr. GI and I plan to donate.

Thanks for reading this year!  It's been so much fun for me to have a creative outlet for our projects, and I'm happy to have a little audience.  :-)  Happy holidays, and see you again in 2012!

A Merry Little Christmas, Part II

I showed you last week how we decked the front halls, so here's a little bit of the Christmas we have spread throughout the house.  I don't go too crazy (I hear there are some people who put a Christmas tree in every room!), but I like to have little reminders of the holidays no matter which room I'm in.

I love this sparkly golden tree sitting on our bar.

A Merry Little Christmas, Part I

I should admit at the outset that I. LOVE. CHRISTMAS.  The stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day is by far my favorite time of year because just about everyone gets on board with the holiday spirit.  Decorations pop up everywhere, whether it's snowflakes, Santas, nativity scenes, or menorahs.  I seriously can't get enough of it.  There are plenty of other holidays in the year (Mr. Great Indoors' favorite is Halloween), but there's no other time of the year as unified as this one. There's a happy vibe around, perfect strangers greeting each other with "Happy Holidays," and holiday music on the radio.  How can you NOT love that?!  (However, I am of the opinion that the Christmas season doesn't officially start until Santa comes through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.... so it irritates me a little bit when I walk into a store BEFORE HALLOWEEN and hear Christmas music.  But to each his own.)

All that said, it shouldn't be surprising that at the first chance I got I slapped up our Christmas decorations.  Mr. GI and I got back from Thanksgiving on Saturday afternoon, and by the time it got dark I was hauling our red and green totes out of the attic.  Accompanied by "It's a Wonderful Life" on the TV (does anybody else miss that movie coming on directly after the T-Day parade?  silly dog show...), I had 98% of the decorations up by the time Mr. Great Indoors came out of hiding by bedtime.  Here's a peek at Christmas in the Great Indoors this year!