Jordan and her husband totally transformed their kitchen from dark and traditional to light and cottage to the tune of just over a thousand dollars. Amazing!
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Archives for August 2010
How To Hang Curtain Rods In A Corner
We’re back to share phase two of our big sunroom makeover with you guys. After painting the dark daybed white and bringing in our old guest room dresser and mirror for the first phase (which we affectionately refer to as our work-with-what-you-have phase) it was time to add two things to accentuate what we already had going on in the room. Paint and curtain rods. Let’s delve into the paint category first. See, we had been dying to paint the sunroom ceiling an inviting aqua color for a while, especially since it’s a tradition in the south to have a light blue ceiling on your porch (and we figured we’d enjoy the color even more
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Fab Freebie: Bamboo-tiful
We’re giving away $100 towards anything on Smock Paper’s website full of sustainably printed letterpress cards, invites, notepads, gift boxes and wrapping paper. Enter through Sept 1, 2010.
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Take It Back: Returning Things That Don’t Work
Among other things, one quirk I inherited from my mom was my aversion to return lines. Sure, there’s really nothing to fear about going to customer service and returning a purchase that just didn’t work out, but somehow it made me uncomfortable. In most cases I’d rather just suck it up, consider it my bad for buying it, and call it a loss. Maybe I just felt wrong making the retailers deal with my poorly repackaged item or just preferred to avoid any debate over whether it met their policy. But then I met Sherry, the self-proclaimed Queen Of Returns, and my relationship with those once dreaded lines completely changed. Sherry has the exact opposite
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Tuning Empty Glass Bottles Into Glassware
I found instructions for making your own party glassware from old bottles – too bad they didn’t work! Here’s what I learned in the process of trying it out. Maybe you can see where I went wrong.
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Do It Yourself & ReadyMade
You may recall that back in April when Sherry’s belly was still full of baby we had some visitors stop by Clara’s nursery, including one wielding a big camera. Well the pics from that double-duty photo shoot for Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers have finally seen the light of day. At least the ones for Do It Yourself have (the others will be popping up later this year). In fact, a bunch of you have already mentioned seeing them in the Fall 2010 issue that’s out now. Our usual “He Said, She Said” advice column took a one-issue hiatus in order to share those photos of Clara’s DIY-riddled nursery. There’s even
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Turning A Dresser Into A Changing Table
It’s about time that we featured some projects from our über-productive pregnant Twitter friend Jen Woodhouse (who also happens to have moved recently from Nashville to the Richmond area). Jen’s been furiously nesting ever since landing here in Virginia and we thought you guys would love to see some of her projects (all of which you can learn more about on her blog The House of Wood). Here’s her letter: Inspired by your awesome Craigslist dresser project, I refinished an old dresser and will use it as a changing table/dresser for our little Eggroll. You can read more about the project here. And since I find myself wanting to show-and-tell all my DIY stuff with
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How To Prime And Paint A Daybed
You guys may remember the sunroom quickchange that occurred a few months back when we turned our former third bedroom (which once housed a West Elm daybed and a desk) into Clara’s nursery. Being work-with-what-you-have people, we brought the daybed from that old bedroom of yore out into the sunroom, and we mentioned that someday we would hopefully get around to priming and painting it white for a more balanced look (since it’s about a foot away from our other already-white West Elm daybed). We actually didn’t think it looked too bad when it was dark since it worked with the metal framing on the glass doors that surround the room… … but now that
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Fab Freebie: Bird Play
We’re giving a personalized art piece from Modern Bird Studios, who takes your photo and transforms it into a piece of hand-painted modern art. Enter through 8/25/10.
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Turning Izze Soda Bottles Into Vases
We took three colorful soda bottles, paired with some simple white flowers and created a $9 flower arrangement that adds some pop to our kitchen.
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Closing Up Shop
It’s so hard to say goodbye, but in the words of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton: something’s gotta give. Parenthood, home improvement projects, and tons of other blog related undertakings have filled up more of our days, which means that our little t-shirt and print shop will be closing its virtual doors. We proudly rely on two local printing and t-shirt companies to create all of our YHL wares, but we do all of the designing, stocking, packaging, and mailing ourselves. We know that we can probably outsource those responsibilities, but it just feels like something else we would have to juggle – and what can we say, we like to be the ones who
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Our Updated Home Office Corner In The Den
Many people have requested a few photos of my old office in the corner of the den (that’s what we call our informal living room) so I’m here with the goods. Before we created our office/guest room/playroom this small “corner office” was where I worked full time. Here’s what it looked like back then with the old printer and a few file boxes along with my trusty laptop: We decided to keep the desk around as a place for letter writing and web surfing during the weekends (when we don’t want to be holed up in the office). We also think that eventually it’ll become a great place for Clara to draw and do homework
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