2011 - Numbers in review

Around this time each year you get the 'year-in-review' posts. For us 2011 was a real (estate) heavy year. It started in Europe (in the Netherlands) at my parents house in the snow and ended at an apartment 20 minutes north of the place we normally call home.

The reason for the latter is well known to the frequent readers of this blog. This year we put our old house on the market (in early April) and started building our Dream House. We were very fortunate that we sold the old house three weeks ago and that we have a nice roof over our head until - in only a few short weeks - our Dream House will be ready.

As for the review part of the story, here are a couple of stats of this blog courtesy of our friends at Google and FeedJit:

- Our Total webpage views in 2011 (we started in March): 16,616  (at 10pm ET)

- Our Top 5 posts of this blog in 2011:

1. Picking the countertop (June 5) - 575 page views
2. Floored by Flooring Choices  (July 14) - 345 page views
3. Fireplace, part three (August 11) - 313 page views
4. My Perfect Pantry (August 12) - 284 page views
5. Kitchen design made using Home Architect (July 4) - 249 page views

- Our Top 5 traffic sources to posts on this blog in 2011:

1. www.google.com - 2,488 instances
2. ths.gardenweb.com - 1,724 instances
3. www.facebook.com - 938 instances
4. www.linkwithin.com - 715 instances
5. www.google.ca - 476 instances

- Our Top 5 countries in 2011:

1. United States - 12,999 instances
2. Canada - 1,061 instances
3. Germany - 619 instances
4. Australia - 375 instances
5. Netherlands - 205 instances (glad my home country made it into the Top 5...)

We've been pretty humbled by the traffic we've seen coming to our site in 2011. Hopefully we've helped a few people in their own building process(es) by not just telling our choices but by telling about the rationale behind them. We always find it helpful to read how people come to certain decisions and we're happy to return the favor by sharing ours.

In a few weeks our house should be ready, but that doesn't mean the posts will stop. Move-in day is just another milestone, albeit a very big one, but by no means the last one. Hope you'll continue to check out the site in 2012!

Happy New Year, everyone...