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.

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How To Store Christmas Decorations

Q: Can you post about how you store all of your Christmas decorations? Since you rotate the ornaments on your tree each year and have a large tree and a smaller tabletop one as well as exterior decor and mantel stuff I wondered how much space it all takes up. I have an attic like you, which I think is where you store yours, but I don’t really have a system so it feels chaotic. Any tips for getting mine under control? Thanks! – Meghan A: We actually get this question a lot, so you’re not the only one wondering, Meghan! We store it all in a 6 foot by 5 foot area in our

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How I Cut My Own Bangs

Who knew posting one little picture on instagram with Clara would start a tell-me-more-about-the-bangs frenzy? You guys are a curious bunch, demanding a post about my hair. Haha. There were even conspiracy theories that they weren’t real and I was pulling a Kim K on you guys by flipping my ponytail and faking them. Hilarious! But they are in fact real. Can’t say the same thing about my chest (just kidding). I just got off the sofa on Saturday afternoon, walked into the bathroom and cut them, came back out and sat on the sofa, and waited for John and Clara to notice. They seemed not to mind them (in fact John said they made

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How To Clean And Restore Old Wood Furniture

Alternate punny post title: Some Midcentury Microdermabrasion. Ok, so yesterday John explained how we hunted down an old thrift store table and repaired its rickety legs. And since we’re nothing if not honest when it comes to keeping things real-time in this little DIY diary of ours (if something takes two days, it earns two posts – and if a kitchen takes four months, it earns about a hundred) here’s the second chapter for our little dresser-turned-media-cabinet. The title of which could be: How I Showed A Dingy Old Wood Dresser Some Sweet Sweet Love. Or Dr $herdog And Her Scrub-tastic Tricks. You know, depending on your mood. So let’s dive right into how I brought

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2013 Resolutions…

Psst- Thanks SO MUCH for the love with our little announcement this morning guys. You rock our socks. For reals. Well, we aren’t going to make 2,013 resolutions, but here are five of them. You guys know that every year we like to broadcast them to the world to light a fire under our arse in the hopes of accomplishing them (you can check out last year’s here, 2011’s here, and 2010’s here). So let’s get cracking… #1. Hold On. Let’s just say that for anyone who worries we’ll run out of things to do or rooms to makeover or projects to tackle… this is going to be our busiest year yet. Chock fulla new

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Our Lighting Line With Shades Of Light

Let’s talk about some Shady Business. You know the $herdog in me wanted to make that title a Slim Shady reference, right? Anyway, we’ve actually been working on a secret project for over 14 months and we finally get to spill the beans. Jazz hands don’t even begin to cover it. See, back in October 2011 Shades of Light asked us to help them design a lighting collection. And we said “who, us?” quickly followed by a “yes please!” When it came to our goals, we really wanted to keep things casual, playful, happy, and – the biggest challenge – within our budget. Which broke down to keeping the entire collection under $99. There are

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Holiday Hosting Tips

You’re cordially invited to our first ever Christmas dinner! There were 15 people here in total (and 4 of them were under the age of four) so it was lively and our house felt full in the best possible way. Not only did we not set the house on fire, we didn’t even burn the ham. Cue the collective sigh of relief. Actually, although we’ve hosted Clara’s birthday party last year & the year before (oh yeah and our wedding) they were all outside – so this was the first time we’ve had a big inside gathering. I kinda went into it worried that we’d be bad hosts/wouldn’t have any fun, but it was truly

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Decorating With Christmas Lights & A Teacher Gift Idea

Lights, camera, action! Ok, more like lights, wrapping presents, teacher gifts, action. Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? But I have lots to tell you. Warning: this post is all over the place. A holiday smorgasbord if you will. We’ll cover: our somewhat non-traditional holiday tradition what we’ll be doing for Christmas dinner how we decorated the outside of our house for Christmas this year what we used to wrap all of our gifts (for zero point zero zero dollars) what we gave as teacher gifts for Clara’s preschool teachers Representing the “action” part of this post’s title, this year was going to be the very first year that we weren’t scurrying

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What We’d Do Differently In Our First House

Psst- We just learned about another awesome way to raise money for the relief fund for the Sandy Hook tragedy thanks to some generous Etsy artists who are donating money that they make this week from their Etsy shops to the cause. Check it out here. We’re putting the finishing touches on Clara’s DIYed Christmas present, so we’ll be back with a ton of pictures and details for you tomorrow (ahhhhhicantwait) but in the meantime, lots of folks have requested a post about what we’d do differently if we were decorating our first house now, instead of 2-6 years ago. See, back in this video we mentioned that when we look at old pics we

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How To Paint A Brick Wall

Note: Our heads are still spinning from the terrible tragedy in Connecticut on Friday. We’re sending lots of love to everyone up there and holding Clara close. Our friend Roo, who has three small children and only lives a few towns away from Sandy Hook wrote a post about how we can help, so for anyone looking for ways to make a small difference, here’s that link. Some brick-painting happened in the sunroom… Which we don’t think will surprise/sadden nearly anyone on the interweb since we heard so many war cries of “paint that brick!” after sharing our last sunroom post… We even got a bunch of more passionate and detailed pleas like: “I’m never

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How To Make A Holiday Window Banner From Felt Ornaments

There are a few more holiday projects going on (aka: getting crossed off the list – woot!) so let’s get right into it. Last year I grabbed four of these 3-packs of white felt tree ornaments from Target. I picked them up about a week after Christmas when they were marked down to ten cents per set instead of a dollar, which meant that in total I had 12 mini felt trees for 40 cents. They seemed kinda perfect to make a casual little banner that looks like hand-cut paper but is actually felt that I didn’t have to cut (which is win/win). Sidenote: this is my hand but it looks so much like John’s

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2012 Holiday Gift Guide: For The Ladies

Aw, yeah. Momma made a mood board… for mommas (or any other ladies out there). So without further ado, here’s what I’m loving – both as gift ideas for fellow gals in my life… or even for finding under the tree myself. Oh and in the interest of thriftiness, there are a bunch of under-$15 things, a few $30-or-less finds, and a couple spendier items peppered in there (but nothing over 65 beans). 1. This fun watch watch from Anthropologie is pretty cute. I could see going in on it with a sister in law (since most of our family gifts are in the $30 range, this $58 gift is perfect for two folks to

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2012 Holiday Gift Guide: For Little Ones

We’ve received a bunch of requests for a Christmas gift roundup for kids, so here are a few items that we’re loving (most items are under $25 – some are even under $12, and nothing is over $49). 1. Clara loooves painting and definitely has an appreciation for vibrant colors, so I think she’d love something like this $25 watercolor print from Etsy. Another fun gift idea would be to get some colorful paints and a few pieces of cardstock for some good quality time spent painting together. 2. Clara’s always enamored with toys like this in waiting rooms and other kid’s houses, so when John’s mom asked for links to things she might like,

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