Announcing the Winter Pinterest Challenge!

I am honored (and frankly a little surprised!) to be amongst the great bloggers heading up the Winter Pinterest Challenge.  That's right-- Katie at Bower Power and Sherry at Young House Love are back at it again, and Cassie of Hi Sugarplum and I have been invited to join in on the fun.  And yes, it's totally less than two weeks until spring (and we've been having spring-like temps in Georgia for the past month), but you should know by know that this crew follows its own set of rules.

The idea of the Pinterest Challenge is that Katie and Sherry realized they had pinned all sorts of great ideas on their Pinterest boards that they should just do.  Sort of like an early Dude, Get On That Already challenge, except with Pinterest.  So they decided to team up once a season to create one project based on a pin.  You might remember the last few challenges I participated in, including summer's guest bedroom crayon wax paper artwork (and summery recipes for extra credit) and fall's framed paint chip art.

This time around we're putting out the challenge for all of you crafty folks to post your own projects by next Wednesday, March 14.  You don't have to do something too huge or time-intensive to participate (my past projects have been completely freeeee and only took a tiny bit of elbow grease each time), but please share if you create something!  You're welcome to use the Pinterest challenge banner in your own blog post, and make sure to link up to the hosts in your post, too.

P.S.  You can follow me on Pinterest here, and follow Katie, Sherry, and Cassie, too!  Come on-- you know you want to continue the vicious cycle.  If you still haven't heard of Pinterest, check out their About page and request to join the madness ASAP.  And in the interest of full disclosure, Pinterest doesn't endorse this challenge.

Lusting over our Reclaimed Barnwood Table

As you saw in this post, we went from a pile of old barn lumber to a beautiful table, effectively replacing this awkward four-seater...

...with this eight- (even ten if we try hard enough) top.  It's amazing how an appropriately-sized table makes the dining room feel bigger.

A Valentine's Day Heartbreak: Lost and Found

This is the story of the little girl (or boy) inside all of us.  The girl who finds a puppy and dreams what her new puppy-filled life would be like.  I was that girl two weeks ago, when this precious puppy made her way into our lives.

Our Reclaimed Barnwood Table

As I talked about during the dining room stop of the house tour, I've been dreaming of a bigger dining room table for years now.  Our first table only held four people, and we regularly have six people over for dinner. We all had to smoosh together around a too-small table, and our food had to be set up buffet-style on the kitchen counters, which then left no room to cook anything...  And God forbid we want to invite more than six people over to eat, because then we'd probably be better off eating on the floor.  It was about time we changed that.

So for Christmas, Mr. Great Indoors built me my very own beautiful table.  Of course, I took plenty of pictures through the process and thought I'd share them in two separate posts:  one dedicated to the building of our beautiful table and one just for all the tasty pictures.  Mmmmm.

I'm choosing not to call this one a "do it yourself" project because we had specialized furniture equipment at our disposal.  Mr. GI's family owns a furniture store, and they also have a shop full of equipment for manufacturing their own pieces.  They were kind enough to let us use their lumber and tools for a few days.  You could certainly do a good portion with your own sander, table saw, etc., but it would probably take longer than the three days Mr. GI took to build ours.

Happy 2012!

Our latest project, which I'll write about as soon as I finish editing the pictures...

I know this is incredibly late (somehow January is already over?), but happy new year!  I've been a busy bee at work the past three weeks, and any time at home has been reserved for quality time with Mr. Great Indoors and Chewy.  Or catching up on sleep. 

Inspired by a few other bloggers (like Sara at House Bella, who created a beautiful 2012 bucket list), I've been contemplating some new year's resolutions for the house and blog.  I'm sure these will change, but in the meantime here's what I'm thinking.

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!