Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Hanging A Pegboard In A Basement Workshop

So I finally finished decking out the other half of my Instagram-arted basement pegboard. Yup, I added a little makeshift shelf that I primed and painted, got a non-electrical music device (how’s that for mysterious?), and even hung something kitchen-related as art. Actually a lot of you guys have been asking what we did with the cutting board that we picked up a couple of months ago as part of The Shops At Target collection, so… I give you… America The Pegboard-iful. I just thought it made for some cool (and sawdust-proof) art, since I’m into maps and all. It worked out nicely that the blue-painted edge of it coincidentally goes with my navy pegboard.

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Fab Freebie: A Literal Fab Freebie

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** You guys hit the 10,000 entry cap to giveaway within 24 hours, so you must love some Fab as much as I do (or perhaps you just like $500). Either way, we’ve crowned a random winner and it is… Whitney (who says “Most of my apartment is muted gray, yellow, and blue, but my kitchen has bright red baking dishes on display.”) Congrats Whitney! I’m a recent addict to Fab (I own more t-shirts from there than I probably should admit). So imagine my reaction when I got an email from them offering to do a – wait for it – $500 Fab gift card

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A Big Girl Bedroom With A Daybed & A Secondhand Dresser

A dove and a moose walk into a bar. Just kidding, not a bar. That’s not kid-room appropriate. How about a dove and a moose walk onto a playground? Anyway, I’ll just cut to the chase. We finally found a dresser for Clara’s big girl room, complete with dovetailed joints! Hence the mention of a dove (ah, they don’t make ’em like they used to). We wanted one for the playroom/ big girl room for Clara once she moves in there (so that eventual-second-child can use Clara’s original dresser since it works so well as a changing table in the nursery). And that way we’re not undoing one room to redo another room, which always

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Our (Completely Unofficial) Macklemore Thrift Shop Challenge

Psst- We’re bouncing around the West Coast this weekend with a talk and signing in Portland on Saturday at Rejuvenation at noon (for more info call 503-238-1900). Then on Sunday we’ll be in Palo Alto at 11am at the West Elm on 180 University Avenue (RSVP here). Parking isn’t enforced on Sundays so you can park anywhere, or you can purchase a visitors pass at Palo Alto Civic Center and park in any of their lots all day. There are two irrefutable facts about me. 1) I tend to fall in love with rappers and 2) I’m a fool for a good thrift shop. So when those two passions collided in the form of this

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Two Fun Ways To Use Instagram Photos

What’s better than one fast and easy project with family photos? How about thirty. Just kidding. How about two. Cool? Let’s do this. First up, we have Photo Project Numero Uno. We’ve had fun with the little Sherri Conley cards-turned-art that we hung above our sofa in eight Ikea frames two years ago. First with bright paper behind them and then with some textured fabric as the backdrop around a year later… … but lately we’ve been jonesing for something a little more personal. It all started when Sherry and I were talking about how Instagram seems to capture “real life” better than formal camera pics from a big event. Why? I think because we

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House Crashing: Cozy & Full Of Character

Who’s in the mood for some snooping? When Lori and her husband Greg (and their sweet son Owen) invited us over to crash their charming Richmond home, we jumped at the chance. Isn’t that little tin roof over the door awesome? I also love that the front steps are tiered on three sides instead of being closed in on the ends. Bet someone could DIY that… Lori and Greg are actually veterans of the House Crashing experience. They had us over their first home back in 2010 (when both Lori and I were both prego). We loved that house so much that we couldn’t wait to see where they lived now… … especially since in

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Cutting Down A Table To Make A Kids Table

The walls of Clara’s big girl room are dry and the few items of furniture that we have (mainly just a daybed, an old side table, and two small wooden thrift store chairs that I don’t think we’ve even shown you yet) are back in the room. So here’s how it’s looking now: Totally done and magazine ready, right? Just kidding. But it’s a huge improvement from this so we’re psyched. The new wall color is awesome. Pardon these not great pics of it (Monday’s pics did it more justice). In person it’s subtle and warm and cozy but not too yellow-y or peach. And since it’s not too bold or compete-y, it’ll allow us

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How Much Money Do You Make When You Write A Book?

Let’s take a second to chat about how the book bid-ness works, at least for us. Sometimes we get hilarious and adorable comments like this: “Holy cow, your book was a New York Times bestseller! Congrats! You must be rich!!” … … and it makes us realize that other than fleetingly mentioning how the whole book deal thing works in this blogiversary video (around 17:10 near the end), we haven’t really talked about it at all. So since folks have been requesting more behind the scenes details on the subject (even from as early as September of last year when we did the Q&A video below) this post is well overdue. Let’s dive in and

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Fab Freebie: World Play

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And the lucky / randomly selected / soon to be quite worldly person is… Briana (who says “London, Ontario is special to me. That’s where I first lived on my own, went to University, met my husband, and I just loved that city. Plus, it has the best spaghetti restaurant ever, Spageddy Eddy’s!”). Congrats! And for everyone else, scroll down to the contest entry details for a sweet little discount the Wallpapered folks added for everyone. One look at Pinterest and I don’t feel quite so alone in my fascination with maps. So to everyone else out there who digs a little cartography

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The Slow Journey From Junk Room To Playroom

About a month ago we were walking around the park and Clara pointed to a dogwood tree and said “wow, that’s a big big tree in a big big world.” John and I cracked up. So now when I think of Clara’s playroom/big girl room, I also think of the big big tree and the big big world of ours. Hilarious. Anyway, back to the room that we have affectionately (and ironically) called the playroom. Remember that it looked like this when we moved in? And then it got all cluttered up with junk and looked like this? And then we organized it with the help of my mom and it looked like this? And

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On The Road Again

Man, it feels like it’s been a month since we had a book tour update for ya. Oh, that’s because it has. We were on hiatus while bookstores and retailers focused on the holiday rush (instead of hosting authors) so last week’s adventures in Texas and Florida were our first stops since finishing up in DC and Richmond in early December. And as much fun as stops in northern cities like Boston, Chicago, Toronto and Minneapolis were – we were excited to enjoy some warm weather in the southern half of the country. #longpostwarning But then Austin had to go and look like this… Texas was apparently in a month-long drought until we (and our

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Adding Storage With An Ikea Expedit Bookshelf

We’re trying to redo the sunroom on a budget using as much that we already have as we can (since we have other projects like Clara’s big girl room, a guest bathroom, and a porch & carport overhaul that we’re saving our pennies for). But there’s a delicate balance between function and saving money. Sometimes you can use 100% of what you already have and achieve 70% function in a room, or you can spend a little money along with using 90% of the things you already have and end up with 100% function. So as you might guess, we’re going for 100% function on a small budget. So far all we’ve bought is one

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