Blogging
Spookin’ Up Some Appreciation
**Psst- We know most Fridays we just post once, but every month on sponsor shout out day we double up. So we’ll be back in a few hours with a yard-sale related post.
For October’s public shout out of thanks to our sponsors (the people who make the other 30+ posts possible each month) we’re “embracing the spooky” and highlighting some items that have a darker side… or just make us crave candy. And there’s a hint about Monday’s giveaway hidden in here too. As always, the items haven’t been given to us (time for the obligatory no-swag policy link) and you can browse some ghoulish discounts at the bottom too. Okay, there’s actually nothing ghoulish about the discounts, I just got carried away.
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- A trio of affordable furniture painting e-books ($8 after discount) from Altar’d Designs.
- This killer marble herringbone backsplash on The Tile Shop‘s homepage. I need CPR.
- Speaking of which, Royal Design Studio‘s herringbone stencil looks pretty sweet.
- Z Gallerie, who shows that Halloween can be equal parts scary and shiny.
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- Shades of Light‘s collection of mirrors, like this vintage-inspired damask fella.
- Removable vinyl decals from WallQuotes (perfect for seasonal spookiness).
- Freshline Illustration‘s personalized stationery, which comes in tons of colors.
- Thinking of all the candy you could fit in this canvas tote from Jilly’s Happy Home.
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- Personalized silhouette jewelry from Nella Designs, like this charm made from a photo.
- Smock Paper‘s double-sided eco wrapping paper collection. Decisions, decisions.
- Tons of personalized and customizable stationery options from Silhouette Blue.
- Liberty Hardware‘s combo of satin nickel & “cocoa bronze” in their Zurie collection.
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- Madcanvases‘ photo collage (it’s getting us excited to stop in Chicago on 11/10).
- This braille “Feel the Love” necklace from Heart & Stone Jewelry that’s sweetly literal.
- Naked Binders. They’ve got no vinyl, no PVC, and no color if you’d like.
- Mirror Mate‘s sexy tile-looking Lexington line of mirror-ready frames.
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- First hand reviews of Fish Foam cleaner from other bloggers, like House of Smiths.
- 1 Canoe 2‘s beautiful antique letterpress-y way of saying thanks.
- Rentini‘s cool vacation rental options like this waterfront cabin with views of orcas!
- Oreck VersaVac, a vacuum/steam mop that makes me want to say things like “neato.”
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- The interesting things (and commentary) from Ruby Lane seller “Dead People’s Things.”
- Greatly-discounted mirrors galore on one of Joss & Main‘s events this week.
- Scrapbooking materials for all occasions from FotoBella. Even creepy occasions…
- Here’s your hint about Monday’s giveaway. It’s gonna be tiny… but still worth $400.
And here are the deets on those DISCOUNTS:
- Royal Design Studio: 10% off stencils with code YHL10
- Shades of Light: 10% off using code YHL0811
- WallQuotes.com: 15% off with the code YHL15
- The Tile Shop: 10% off when you use the code YHL10
- Heart & Stone Jewelry: 10% off with the code YHL10
- Madcanvases:15% off with code YHL15
- One Canoe Two: 10% off with code YHL10
- Silhouette Blue: 15% off with code YHL15
- Nella Designs: 10% off with code YHL10
- FotoBella: 10% off your order with code YHL
- Altar’d Designs: 20% off ebooks with code YHL20
- Freshline Illustration: 25% off with code YHL25
September Superlatives: Trains & Travels
October is officially here, but before we dive into another month of projects, it always helps us keep the ol’ momentum up to take an appreciative look back on all of our happenings from last month – everything from making over Granny’s bathroom and building a train board to making some tables into ottomans and celebrating our 5th blogging anniversary. And since we love to throw in something never-before-seen, we’re actually revealing the first stop on our book tour below. So here’s everything in our usual weird yearbook-superlative-style that definitely inspires us to keep plugging away (plus it makes browsing our archives a lot easier – you can read back through January of 2011 right here in just 20 posts instead of 700). Hootie hoo for September in review.
Most Surprising: Considering how much we loved the blue metal stools in our kitchen, it was surprising (even to us) when these craigslist finds wormed their way into our lives. Thankfully we’ve got a plan for the blue stools (involving our sunroom) since these swiveling guys are our new favorite things.
Biggest / Most Gradual Transformation: Our master bedroom, which has come a long way since we first moved in. But it took a while to get there, which is why we documented its evolution in this picture-filled post for ya. The lesson? Don’t despair if things aren’t done the first week, month, or even year that you move in.
Biggest Missed Opportunity to Make A Quad City DJs Reference: This post about building a train board for Clara (that the music-fueled Sherry somehow failed to entitle “C’mon Ride The Train”). It’s like I don’t even know her anymore…
Video Killed The Comment Section: Despite some requests for a post about how we make our videos, this lengthy post might have had ten comments in the first hour. Perhaps I overestimated how geeky our readers were. What? You don’t want to hear about my high school obsession with a camcorder?
Creepiest Project: It’s not even Halloween yet, but we’re already decorating with dead things. At least it was a pretty dead thing: this butterfly that Sherry (and Clara) found in our yard – which found a place on our bookshelf. Update: it’s still going strong and looks the same – although we’ve been meaning to add a glass dome over it just to protect it a little more.
Toughest Decision: Finally giving up on our craigslist dining room chairs and getting some deeply discounted new chairs to take their place. We love the new look, but it was kind of a bummer to not be able to make the other ones work. Ah well, live and learn.
Biggest Oops: Breaking our camera when it fell off of a board I was sawing. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it gave us an excuse to get a new camera which also does HD video. Speaking of which…
Oddest Couple: Me and Sherry, who shot this latest house tour video with our new camera as a two-some. I held the camera (since Sherry is Miss Shakes-A-Lot when it comes to video) and she narrated behind me. Yep, this is a fancy operation over here.
Biggest Relief: Finally being able to unveil this promo video for our book, which we shot back in March (but then had to keep our lips sealed for months). Even better, we finally got to reveal some of the secret book projects that we did back in January…
Most Burger Approved: This little ottoman upgrade in our master bedroom where we repurposed some old X-based side tables to create new stools at the end of our bed (they’re our version of doggy steps so Burger can climb into bed).
Most Likely To Require Eating Lots of Tomato Soup: This project, using the special edition Warhol Campbell’s Soup cans at Target. A little cork board to soften the metal edges, some colored pencils, and voila! Update: we did successfully consume all of the soup. Woot.
Most Uplifting: Our visit to my Granny’s house in West Virginia, where we spent a work-filled weekend updating her downstairs powder room. It was a bit tiring, but we left feeling nothing but elated.
Biggest 24 Hour Improvement: Granny’s bathroom, which was already looking worlds better by the end of day #2 (thanks to some paint, a new floor, and tidying up a lot of rough spots in the room).
Breakout Star: This has to go to Granny herself, who seemed to earn herself quite a few new fans when we revealed her new bathroom to her (on video). And I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you guys saw exactly why we love her so much.
Most Academic Shopper: Sherry, who wrote this post about how she finds deals on clothes and keeps her wardrobe in check (you guys seemed to really like the idea of giving your clothing a grade, btw). Closet GPA, for the win.
Biggest Rivalry: We did a fun little side-by-side comparison of the rooms in our first house and their counterparts in this house. And yep, we even chose winners. The final tally of wins may be closer than you’d expect…
Littlest Updates: We made four small changes around the house – like installing another dual-flusher in the guest bathroom and creating a hidden spot for our shredder (below).
Longest Graphic: The images in our posts are usually less than 400 or 500 pixels tall, but we made an extreme exception when we created a graphic timeline depicting our history from 2004 as a way to kick off our 5th blogivesary. That thing clocked in at over 4100 pixels long!
Most Ordinary: The day we shared as our usual blogiversary “day in the life” post. It might not be everybody’s normal, but it’s a pretty regular weekday around these parts.
Biggest Conspiracy Theory: People became quite curious about the “tragic event” that robbed poor Olivia the pig of one of her ears (which we mentioned in this blogiversary post about some YHL facts and figures). The story? Clara just bent it back and forth until it snapped off. Oh the humanity.
Most Scene-Stealing: Clara & Burger, who got their own little Blogiversary Q&A video this year, which had folks just as captivated (if not more so) than the video of me and Sherry answering personal questions that you guys asked.
Most Nostalgic: Going back through our archives and plucking out some favorites (and least favorites – like this image that won for “Worst Photo”).
Most Ambitious: Stating our goals for our next year of blogging – which we do every blogiversary, sometimes with limited success. This year we’re hoping to embrace the crazy, mix up our posting style, write shorter posts among those beefier long ones, and incorporate you guys more. Let’s see how we do…
Most Graphic: This blogiversary post showing the results of our little reader survey. I had some fun making the infographics, and I believe the consensus was that Beyonce makes any chart better.
Most Likely To Make Pigs Fly: The first stop of our book tour (which kicks off in less than 3 weeks!) in the city of the flying pig: Cincinnati, Ohio. We’re so pumped to reveal the full 17-city list tomorrow morning!
How did September shape up for you? Did you get any major projects completed? Try your hand at a makeover for someone else? Celebrate any special anniversaries/milestones? Or just have fun photoshopping your head onto things like a foosball table?
Blogiversary 5: Charts, Graphs & Tina Fey’s Face
As our fifth blogiversary week comes to a close, we must first dole out a giant thank you to everyone for the sweetness (oh the humanity) and the laughs (oh the hilarity) and – well – for taking our little annual poll that we dropped into Monday’s post. This year we had over 30,000 entries. Wowza. Thank goodness Google helped me crunch the numbers (a stark contrast to our first blogiversary poll where I copied and pasted all 199 comment responses into a spreadsheet by hand).
Obviously it wasn’t a scientific study, but we did come out with some fun facts and figures that we thought would be fun to share here courtesy of some fun little graphics we whipped up. I’m hoping if I say “fun” enough you guys will forget this is a post about statistics. Did it work? If not, and you refuse to scroll further, I’ll summarize it for you: most of you are pretty much like us (well, Sherry to be exact): married American moms who own a house and a dog. Although for the first time we’re older than a majority of our readers. So maybe we should throw some quotation marks around the “young” in our name (or check up on the availability of “Thirty-Something House Love”). Anyways, here goes nothing…
We had so much fun reading all of the stats on you guys. Seriously, the math-nerd in me had a field day. And although 2% of our readers being guys doesn’t sound like a lot, that means at least 600 dudes hang out around here (and I’d be willing to bet we have a few male lurkers – murkers? – who didn’t take the survey). I’m downright psyched about that. Did anything surprise you? Is there anything you’d love to know next year? Oh yeah, and speaking of yesterday’s goal post, this post is under 375 words (not counting the text in the graphics). Small yet satisfying. Like popping a dense little truffle over a heavy ol’ hunk of pound cake. Take that resolution!
Image sources: Beyonce, Ultrasound, Black Eyed Peas, Tina Fey, J.K. Rowling, Martha Stewart and Candice Olson.
Psst- Clara’s doing her best pop-star impersonation yet over on Young House Life. Soon she’s going to be demanding that someone else holds her umbrella for her and wearing sunglasses 24/7.
