This really is all ribbon. To give you perspective on its size, lying upon it is my neighbor, who dresses curiously like a Lego figurine.

For some reason, I really do have enough ribbon that I could have wrapped an entire house in a bow this Christmas season. (See photo below.) Apparently several people did just that because Lawrence home sales soared in December, although not enough to put local real estate totals in positive territory for 2014.

Real estate agents sold 76 homes in Lawrence in December, up 33 percent from the same period a year ago. Sales of newly constructed homes did even better, with eight sales compared with just one in December 2013.

But for the year, Lawrence’s two-year streak of increasing home sales has ended, according to a new report by the Lawrence Board of Realtors. Lawrence home sales totaled 1,059 for all of 2014, falling just short of the 1,061 homes sold in 2013. So, while technically it was a down year for the market, those numbers could have ended up much worse. In August, we were reporting that homes sales year over year were down almost 6 percent. The final few months of 2014 finished strong, which gives reason for optimism that housing sales will make gains in 2015.

The 2014 numbers also are well above recent lows. In 2012 only 905 Lawrence homes were sold, and the market hit its bottom in 2011 with 703 homes sold.

Here’s a look at some other numbers from the report:

• December’s strong showing notwithstanding, 2014 was not a good year for sales of newly constructed homes. Only 76 newly constructed homes sold for the year.. That’s down from 94 in 2013 and 89 in 2012.

• Agents sold $208.9 million worth of homes in Lawrence in 2014. That’s down 4 percent from the $217.6 million total in 2013. It is up, however, from the $172.2 million mark in 2012.

• The median number of days a house sits on the market before it sells was 34 in 2014, down from 42 in 2013 and 59 in 2012.

• The median selling price of a home checked in at $167,000, down 1.8 percent from the 2013 median of $170,000.

In case you are wondering how Lawrence’s housing market is faring compared with our neighbors in Kansas City, it appears the K.C. metro area also experienced a bit of a plateau in home sales in 2014. A new report from the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors said total home sales in 2014 were up 0.1 percent in the metro area. But unlike in Lawrence, sales of newly constructed homes led the way with a 3.3 percent gain for the year. Home prices also were up. The median selling price for homes checked in at $159,900, up 4.9 percent from 2013.

In other news and notes from around town:

• Unless the sofa cushions are even bigger than your ribbon stash, most people have to use a bank to buy a new home. Well, get ready to see a name change at one of the larger banks in the city. As we previously reported, Douglas County Bank reached a deal to merge with Lee’s Summit, Mo.-based Metcalf Bank. Although the plan in September, when the deal was announced, was for Douglas County Bank to take on the Metcalf name, that now won’t happen.

Instead, the new name of the bank is Central Bank of the Midwest. The name change took place in the last several days as the deal was closed, but the signs on the bank haven’t yet changed. Local president Pat Slabaugh told me he expects all the company’s banks to have new signs in the first or second week of February.

In case you are confused (which I often am at a bank because my wife makes me guess our ATM PIN code), Douglas County Bank didn’t scrap its previously announced deal and go partner with a different bank. Instead, what happened is that Metcalf Bank, subsequent to the September announcement of its deal with Douglas County Bank, changed its name to Central Bank of the Midwest.

Although the sale is now complete, the transition process for Douglas County Bank customers to become full-fledged Central Bank of the Midwest customers is still ongoing. Slabaugh said by late March that Douglas County Bank customers should be transitioned over to a new online system run by Central Bank of the Midwest. Customers of the bank will receive significant notice about the transition and any steps they’ll need to take, Slabaugh said. In the meantime, all ATM cards, Douglas County Bank checks and other such items will continue to work.

The big news continues to be that Central Bank of the Midwest will keep open all of the existing Douglas County Bank locations.

“The philosophy of Central Bank of the Midwest is very much the same as Douglas County Bank,” Slabaugh said. “They’re a community bank and we will continue to do business as usual in that regard.”

Central Bank of the Midwest is part of a bank holding company that is family owned. The bank holding company, Central Bancompany, has been owned by the Cook family of Jefferson City, Mo., for four generations. The holding company owns more than a dozen banks in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Oklahoma.