Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

| By | | 124 Comments

Our Edible Garden A Year Later

Last year was our very first year spent playing farmer. Perhaps I should rephrase that. Last year we enthusiastically planted some herbs, veggies, and fruits in a small backyard garden that we created just for that purpose. Farmer might be a bit of a stretch, but for two not-always-great-with-plants people, it was quite a lofty goal… and it worked! Now that spring is back in full bloom (and the local farmer’s market is finally open again) we were able to replant a ton of new stuff and some old favorites too. You can read about how we originally prepped and planted our edible garden right here (tip: we used some non-edible evergreen shrubs to fill

[ Read More ]

| By | | 161 Comments

Window Shopping At HomeGoods

By now you guys have probably grown accustomed to our random tours through places like Target, Ikea, Crate & Barrel and Anthropologie with our camera in tow. But this time we traipsed through HomeGoods and couldn’t stop ourselves from snapping pictures of all the things that we loved (with fabulous prices to match). So without further ado, here’s what’s frying our bacon these days from the decor mecca that is HomeGoods… This amazing white cut-out urn is nothing short of art when it’s placed in the center of a large dining table or displayed on a console table or buffet. And although we’ve seen them in a few places for upwards of $100-150, this baby

[ Read More ]

| By | | 458 Comments

Eight Things We Did To Prepare For Our Baby’s Arrival

With just seven days until my actual due date (although we’re pretty sure Baby P will make us wait even longer), we’ve officially begun getting ready for her arrival. Of course you’ve seen us tackling her nursery, but now when we say getting ready, we really mean getting-ready-for-my-water-to-break-and-to-actually-welcome-our-new-daughter-into-the-world. See, pretty much right after we found out I was pregnant we slowly began to wrap our minds around the idea that our family would be growing as my belly continued to expand with every baked potato and chocolate milk craving. Now you see why I’ve been humming my tweak on an old Beyoncé classic: “I don’t think you’re ready for this belly.” And only quite recently

[ Read More ]

| By | | 144 Comments

Organizing Old Photos In Numbered Albums

Maybe it’s the whole organize-everything-because-it’s-spring thing or even a bit of last minute nesting, but lately I’ve been all about whipping things into submission. As in, finding a place for every last paperclip and utensil… even putting every single one of our photos into coordinated leather albums and chronologically numbering them. Yeah, it’s a little crazy but I’ve always been a nerd for organization. And looking at those nice little hand-numbered tags just makes me smile. It’s the little things, right? The first stage of the project was to go through all my mismatched old falling-apart albums (and stacks of sad album-less photos) and put them all in chronological order. Then I grabbed some nice-enough-but-not-bank-breaking

[ Read More ]

| By | | 82 Comments

Budget Blooms: May Madness

As most of you know, every month we like to enjoy one inexpensive- and sometimes free- bouquet to keep things feeling fresh around here (the idea actually stemmed from a super sweet Christmas present from the hubs a while back). But this month we got lucky. Nope, not with a free backyard bouquet, but with the photo shoot that we mentioned this morning… which involved a cooler full of flowers provided by the prop stylist, many of which weren’t even touched when the cameras were being packed away. And what did that ever-amazing prop stylist do? She offered all the floral outcasts to us as she left. Did I mention said prop stylist happens to

[ Read More ]

| By | | 45 Comments

Behind The Scenes: Our Friday Photo Shoot

We’re back to share the “backstage” details of our recent photo shoot with the crew from BHG for Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers (with our newly transformed nursery and our recently renovated bathroom playing the stars of the show). Let’s just say it was a day full of prepping, propping, shooting, eating, secretly high fiving when no one was looking (ok, that was just me and John), and standing around staring as the masters worked their magic (again, that was just me and John). And we had a lot to stare at. There were large panels of fabric to soften any outside light, big worth-more-than-our-house camera lenses, and computers hooked up

[ Read More ]

| By | | 100 Comments

A House Full Of DIY Projects

When Kara from Made 2 Create invited us to crash her Tulsa, Oklahoma house we decided that even though we couldn’t make the trek over there in person we needed to virtually cover her casa. Because it’s just that good. And to preface this amazing house tour we should mention that almost everything you’ll see in Kara’s gorgeous home came from a garage sale, Craigslist or she and her hubby Tim made it with their own four hands. Now let’s meet Kara the handy homeowner herself: And now that we have the formalities out of the way, let’s poke around inside. Kara built a faux fireplace to create a focal point and put her favorite

[ Read More ]

| By | | 52 Comments

A DIY Baby Mobile With Folded Moravian Stars

When Isabel and Thomas sent over some photos of their DIY mobile project (which was reminiscent of the one that we featured in this nursery makeover of yore) we had to share the eye candy. Here’s their letter: You’ve inspired yet another project, and since you’ve recently completed your nursery I thought this was timely. I learned how to make folded Moravian Stars from a tutorial online (in three different sizes, all in a variety of patterns I printed myself). I used this site and this site for reference, although the former is better. My husband invented the actual “hangers” for the mobile. He’s amazing! So with nothing more than paper, scissors, Mod Podge, a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 87 Comments

An Amazing Kitchen Reno For $8000

You guys have to remember Krystol thanks to the amazing porch makeover that she sent our way a while back. Well, she’s done it again. And her kitchen is nothing short of fantastic (not to mention budget friendly). Here’s her letter: Thank you so much for posting our porch reno on your blog. I was so amazed at the response and wanted to share our latest project: the kitchen reno. We ripped out everything right down to the studs and started over with new Ikea cabinets, new appliances, a new laminate counter and my favorite: a zinc topped work island which we made by “wrapping” the top half of an MDF sheet with zinc that

[ Read More ]