Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Posts by Sherry Petersik

Sherry Petersik is one half of the duo behind the award-winning home improvement and do-it-yourself design blog, Young House Love. Together, she and her husband John have renovated seven homes, published two New York Times Bestselling books, and designed products sold in Target and Home Depot. They are currently enjoying their downsized home on Florida's Gulf Coast with their two kids and their dog, Penny.

| By | | 266 Comments

How To Take Your Own Newborn Photos

You guys have asked some questions about taking our own newborn photos, making Teddy’s birth announcement, taking Clara’s four year photo & making her annual video, and what I got for Mother’s Day (spoiler alert: it’s a super sentimental photo book of kid quotes from Clara), so this post is a smorgasbord of all that documentation. As I wrote this I thought “maybe John and I are more ‘document-happy’ than most people” – you know, to take so many photos and make a yearly video, etc. But then I realized that most people with a blog probably lean towards a love of capturing things, and a ton of our non-blogging friends and relatives have phones

[ Read More ]

| By | | 221 Comments

Finding The Best Outdoor Sofa

The combination of all this nice weather and hosting Clara’s party outside have us back on The Outdoor Update Train. Chugga chugga, baby. Just picture me wearing spit-up-stained overalls with a striped hat to shade my mom-to-an-adorable-baby-who-wakes-up-all-night eyes. It’s particularly exciting because we worked for a few months last year to renovate the sunroom by ripping up the old carpet, removing the old broken doors, lofting the ceiling, getting some electrical work done, installing a plank ceiling, hanging two fans, and tiling the floor. There’s currently a daybed out there (an indoor daybed from West Elm, which has no long-term business being outside) along with an ancient Ikea coffee table. And two of our dining

[ Read More ]

| By | | 313 Comments

One Of Our Favorite Bedroom Paint Colors

We finally painted the guest room! And Burger, as you can see, is THRILLED. No more over-spray marks from door painting forming a lovely “accent wall” over the bed. Huzzah! The color? Sparrow by Benjamin Moore. It’s a color we’ve loved for a while now (it was one of our whole-house-color-palette guesses from last year) and we thought the guest room was the perfect place to try it out since it gets a lot of natural light from that giant triple window along the back wall. Since it’s a deep color we used a tinted primer first, and as usual I did the cutting in while John did the rolling. Oh and we painted the

[ Read More ]

| By | | 97 Comments

Fab Freebie: Oh Baby Baby

We’ve got $500 towards a trio of shops where we got some of our favorite Teddy-items up for grabs this week. First is $200 to Bella Tunno, who makes the cozy striped stroller blanket you may have seen wrapped around him (we got ours as a gift from our friend Christi and have been loving it ever since). They also have bibs, paci clips, lovies, and fun things like a roll-out travel chalkboard set. And they’re running a pretty sweet buy one, give one initiative to fight childhood hunger. Next up is $150 to ModFox, the Etsy shop where we bought our changing pad cover in gray arrow fabric. It’s the perfect shop if there’s

[ Read More ]

| By | | 284 Comments

A “Pink & Gold Everything” Kids Party

This weekend our deck was full of people we love, gathered to celebrate this four year old bean of ours. It was pretty awesome to have so much connected outdoor space to party on (the sunroom-turned-veranda and our big deck that overlooks the grassy backyard felt less chopped up than having some people in the last house’s sunroom while others were on our two-tiered patio). And since our previous house is where we’ve hosted every other Clara-birthday since she was born (here’s the post about her first birthday, the one about her second one, and the one about her third) it felt both weird and wonderful to have our first big birthday gathering here. Most

[ Read More ]

| By | | 229 Comments

How To Make Wooden Play Pastries & Treats For A Kids Tea Party

Remember when Clara was queen of the jellyfish? Good times. The girl definitely has fun with pretend play, and we like to make things for her, especially on occasions like birthdays and Christmas (like this play kitchen, this dollhouse, this latch board, this figurine cubby, this patterned doll cradle, this colorful quilt, this cuckoo clock and this beanbag pouf) so with yesterday being her fourth birthday (HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!?!) I thought some pretend pastries would be fun. I know, it sounds like a cruel joke. “Happy birthday! Here are delicious sugary things you can’t eat because – surprise! – they’re made of wood!” But lately she has been loving tea parties (here she is

[ Read More ]

| By | | 220 Comments

Fab Freebie: Showhaus To Your House

As John mentioned in yesterday’s post, we somehow convinced Arhaus to hook one of you up with the entire Wyatt Outdoor Collection, valued at $4,500! It includes the matching sofa, ottoman, and swivel chair (as shown below) that we used to deck out the front porch of our showhouse. It definitely passes the comfort test, each piece is hand painted to look like weathered wicker, it has a sturdy (but lightweight) aluminum frame, and there’s durable Sunbrella fabric to keep it looking good for the long haul. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available

[ Read More ]

| By | | 68 Comments

Clara Conversations

A bunch of you asked if we’d be continuing this series from Young House Life over here after this post, and the answer is yes. So… happy Saturday! And happy Mother’s Day to all the ladies out there who are celebrating it (says the bleary eyed sleep-deprived mom who wouldn’t have it any other way). Convo #1 Clara (stalling before bedtime): Wait! Before bed let’s talk about my room! Mom: What about your room? Clara: My fairy lights. Mom: What about them?  Clara: They make… my eyes… feel… so… round.  Convo #2 Clara (randomly in the middle of breakfast after looking down at her outfit): I have the most beautiful dress in Virginia. Convo #3 Clara (looking through

[ Read More ]

| By | | 269 Comments

Weekly Baby Photo Project

A lot of you have been asking if we’re taking weekly baby photos of Teddy, like we did with Clara for the first year of her life (you can read more about that project here, here, and here). The answer is yes! Although we had some fun putting a slightly different spin on our weekly project this time around. Here are his first two shots: Note: the number font is called Sullivan and the “weeks” font is called Big Mouth. While we were tempted to do something entirely different for Teddy, we didn’t want to completely reinvent the wheel (when it came down to it, we really liked how Clara’s project turned out). So just

[ Read More ]

| By | | 351 Comments

Making A Waterproof Vinyl Changing Pad Cover

When we last left off in the nursery, we had painted the closet door green, but still had a few lingering functional things that we needed (like a changing pad cover, a hamper, and a bin for dirty diapers) as well as a plan for the wall behind the crib that we had been debating. Update #1. You probably remember when we were considering this fun arrow wallpaper for that spot (among others) but thought it might be a little busy on that side with all the built-ins, so imagine our surprise to find a changing pad cover in the same pattern on Etsy. Teddy loves it. So much, in fact, that he has already

[ Read More ]

| By | | 2,425 Comments

Less Is More (Unless You’re Talking About Oreos)

Life has been busier than ever for us – and there’s nothing like having a baby to confirm your true priorities. We’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately: what exactly are our goals? What are we working towards? Hoping to gain? The answer, we realized, was definitely not more blog hits or traffic or approval. Honestly we both feel unsettled by the idea of our blog growing any larger, and we look fondly back on the earlier days when we worked less, slept more, and spent more quality time with our family and friends. This little website of ours has already surpassed every expectation we ever could have had for it. So what are

[ Read More ]

| By | | 297 Comments

Listy VonListerstein

I’m not going to lie. These days this is pretty much all I want to do (add Burger, Clara, and John in there and I’m even more mooney-eyed and kissy-faced). But to everyone who requested an updated Listy post, I finally got ‘er done. We last shared our to-do list in November, so this check-in is well overdue – and I figured it could make us feel somewhat accomplished just to look at all the stuff we’ve crossed off since then. Picture me making Zoro-esque slicing sound effects with every slash (Teddy thought it was hilarious). These posts were born when people asked how we organize all the stuff on our to-do list and I

[ Read More ]