Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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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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Handmade Holiday

Does this totebag from Richmond Threadlab look familiar? If so, it may be because you caught our Instagram feed a couple of weekends ago when we hit up our local Handmade Holiday Craft Show (just like we did last year). The fair is a bi-annual craft-stravaganza put on by the Richmond Craft Mafia (we went to their Spring version earlier this year too). It’s always filled with tons of cool artists, crafters, and other handmade magicians from the Virginia-ish region. And thanks to most of them having Etsy shops, you guys can sort of virtually shop along with us. So here’s some the cool stuff that we came across, starting with some of the new

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A Sweet Art Studio Makeover By Chris Loves Julia

Psst- We did it. We survived hosting our very first Christmas dinner at our house. So of course Sherry’s hyper and giddy about sharing all of the photos and details next week (we’re spending the rest of the week with the family, but we’re dropping in with a little post today and another one for you tomorrow too). Hope you’re all enjoying the holiday! When it comes to Reader Redesign submissions, sometimes it’s the room pictures that really get me, sometimes it’s the story behind the room, and sometimes it’s both. That’s why we loved the tale Julia and Chris’s studio tells… and the result is pretty sweet too. Here’s her letter: Hey John and

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DIY Christmas Card Photo Ideas

Here she be, all ye merrymakers of the world: our 2012 family Christmas card. Obviously it’s a play on the tradition of leaving some milk and cookies out for Santa, with a nice dose of the reality that unattended food at our house doesn’t stay unattended for very long. By some miracle we were able to get this shot without having to Photoshop the two of them together. Usually Clara is all up Burger’s grill – meaning that Burger bolts before the first shot is snapped. But apparently they play well together when there are treats to be had. These are just some outtakes from our little photo session, which we actually didn’t start until

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Live From Richmond, It’s…

…the third week of December! Okay, maybe that’s not as catchy as the opening to SNL, but for all y’all (yup, I said it) who follow our Instagram pictures (and who have requested the videos to match the wacky photos that we posted below) here ya go. Yes, we never thought we’d actually type a sentence like this, but we’ve had a busy week in the live television department. See, it sounds crazy. Also, about that pic on the right… we didn’t try to match the set. That just happened. And it was hilarious. By coincidence, two local Richmond stations actually invited us to appear on their programs – ahem – their LIVE programs, this

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Turning Bookcases Into Built-Ins & Painting Them

I know what you’re thinking. Do John & Sherry want to marry built-ins? The answer is yes. What can I say, we’re just suckers for them (function + form = jackpot) so it was no surprise that Hilary’s project of turning cheap Craigslist bookcases into an architectural feature had me at “Hey there.” It was just such a smart use of space and such a wise way to adapt something pre-made (and affordable) to work for the room. Here’s her letter: Hey there John + Sherry! My husband and I moved into our little cape cod in Jersey just over a year ago. In the first year we tore out the old flooring, laid all

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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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How To Make A Play Refrigerator From An Old Cabinet

Remember how we DIYed Clara a play kitchen last Christmas? Well, it was such a hit then (and still is – in fact it’s probably one of the only toys that she plays with every day) we immediately knew that we should add to it. More kitchen = more fun, right? What can you add to a play kitchen like ours? Well, it was clearly lacking a frigid kitchen staple. You know, a refrigerator. So we quickly homed in on that as an easy way to upgrade Clara’s setup. And the decision was made even easier by the fact that we had another cabinet leftover from the kitchen remodel that we had been hoarding saving

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2012 Holiday Gift Guide: For The Guys

When Sherry made a mood board of gifts that kids and ladies might like, there were actually a bunch of requests for a guy-gifts version from me. Color me surprised. But who am I to deny the people what they want? (cut to me muttering quiet profanities while trying to make a mood board). The good news is that ten hours later I emerged victorious. Fist bumps for everyone! I won’t even pretend that the items below will tickle every guy’s fancy (do men even having “fancies?”), but here are a dozen items that I wouldn’t mind finding under the tree… 1. This HOMAGE NYC tee, which I’m actually wearing right now. I treated myself

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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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Fab Freebie: Christmas Lights

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** This week’s early Christmas present is going to… Nancy (who says she “could certainly use some new lighting” and her favorite holiday glow “has to be my fireplace.”) Congrats Nancy! As much as we love holiday lights, indoor lighting is something that you stare at every day of the year. So if you don’t love your lighting situation, this is one way to “dude, get on that” without spending any cash. See, recently we were voted one of Lamps Plus’ top home blogs of 2012 (how flattering!) and it came with a $500 shopping spree prize… but you know we don’t take freebies

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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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