Springing Around the House!

Despite the bathroom posts this week, I know I've been MIA for the last few months (Seven posts in the past three months?  Despicable.).  My work schedule has been absolutely nuts, and I haven't had much spare time to do anything.  But finally I had some time to be in the house in the past week, which I guess was obvious since we've started the bathroom.

So what better to do with a few spare minutes last week than spring decorating?  :-)

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!

Decorating for Fall

At the beginning of each season, I shake things up around our house. Most of our decor stays the same from season to season (like the bookcase in our living room or the set-up in our bedroom), but I love switching our bookshelves and the entryway chalkboard. I try to do things a little differently every season, which is tough when I'm working on limited funds.  It forces me to be creative, that's for sure!

Here's the bookshelves on our living room wall (to the left of the kitchen).

One last stop around the house: The DIY bike rack

I realized when posting the French door how-to that I forgot to show my four faithful readers one corner of our house:  the bike rack!

Mr. Great Indoors and I started biking together about a year and a half ago after he had an accident running (darn ankles).  He bought a bike off Craigslist and we started riding together shortly thereafter.  It's an awesome hobby because we can spend time together but still get exercise.  And because both of us have bad knees, it's a lot kinder to our bodies than running ever was.

Around the House: Living Room

Our living room has evolved quite a bit in the past few months. When we moved in, it looked like this:

You can see the dining room area in this pic [plus that hideous fan I'd like to violently rip out of the ceiling. Ugh. Those lampshades should be illegal].

After getting rid of our embarrassingly-awful college furniture, we made a Clampetts-come-to-town trek huge trip to IKEA in the old Nissan (R.I.P.) with the new home owner tax credit to get an all new living room. Much assembly later (thanks to two very good friends), we had two Karlstad love seats, a Poang chair, and other fun stuff.