Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Beauty Queens, Bouncers, Crafting, & Stick Dogs

Hooray, our publisher has finally locked down a few upcoming dates that you guys have been asking for and even added a few more tour stops, so we’ll spill those beans at the end of this post! But before we get to what lies ahead, it’s time for our once-every-two-weeks tour recap of our most recent stops (the last ones of 2012 before things kick back up again in January). After our whirlwind week away in mid-November, we had Thanksgiving week off and then were back on for two separate stops in Washington, DC and one in our hometown of RVA. The first was at the FLOR store in DC. The tight footprint of a

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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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How To Change Your Outlets

While our sunroom mojo was still running on high from accomplishing our most daring painting task to date, I quickly followed up with two small electrical updates to the room. The first is seemingly minor, but to us makes a world of difference in making a room feel new: updating outlets. It’s something that was especially helpful in a room like our sunroom where the off-white outlets just look dirty against the white trim. A basic new outlet and cover plate can run you as little as $2-3 so it’s not a pricey update – even for an outlet-riddled room like ours (there were nine in here). And the task of replacing them is pretty

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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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Simple Christmas Decorating

Let’s talk about the festive-ification of various surfaces. Booyah. $herdog had some fun with the mantel… as she is apt to do. And since $herdog is also apt to share the play by play of her various surface-switcharoos with you guys, especially around the holidays, you better ho-ho-hold onto your hats. Because it’s about to get festive up in here. Spoiler alert: the console table and the built-ins weren’t safe either… The mantel makeover was pretty simple, I hung our stockings by the chimney with care, and stacked some faux presents that I made a while back on the mantel (more on how I made those here). Oh and see that glittered stag at the

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Fab Freebie: Sew Simple

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** After clocking 10,000 entries under 24 hours, we’re already back to crown a random winner of the SINGER One sewing machine. The lucky person is… Angela (who says she’s a 1 on the sewing skills scale: “I can sew a straight line, but only if someone threads the machine for me first”). Congrats! I’ve never touched a sewing machine in my life, but I’ve heard Sherry’s passionate muttering from the next room while using hers. Which is why anything labeled “Our easiest to use machine!” sounds compelling. And we’re so (sew?) excited that Singer is helping us give away a SINGER One – a feature-packed

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How To Paint Extra High Vaulted Ceilings

“Oh what a feeeeeeling, painting on the ceeeeeiling.” Why yes that was a Lionel Richie reference. You’re welcome. It was time to get some paint up in this heezy. And by heezy, I mean sunroom… hence the furniture being all piled in the center. But before we get to painting, let’s talk about the half-brick wall in this room – since you guys offered up lots of thoughts and suggestions in the last sunroom post. Some had suggested covering the drywalled portion in brick veneer or reclaimed wood. Unfortunately the dry wall sits in front of the brick, so there’d be this weird lip between the real brick and the veneer/wood (so we’d prefer not

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November Superlatives: Rams, Moose, & Sailfish

Update: Yeesh, sorry about that oddly reoccurring Amazon/B&N.com “out of stock” message. To everyone who’s contacting us about getting our book (thank you!), you can order a signed copy here (they can ship it right to your door) or you can try calling/visiting a Barnes & Noble in your area (we hear they’re easier to find in stores at the moment). Happy Friday y’all. Now that we’ve checked off a bunch of projects this week (decorating our tree, framing our bathroom mirror, and ORBing our hardware) along with a craftsman house crash, a DIY link-fest, and a look back at a bunch of mistakes we’ve made, we thought we’d take a moment to look back

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Five Home Mistakes We Made (We Learned The Hard Way)

I was lying in bed thinking about what random lessons we’ve learned in over nearly seven years of homeownership and DIY, and I realized it might make a good post. Shoulda woulda coulda – ya know? Here’s what I came up with (which is by no means all-inclusive, but hopefully will help someone else out there who’s just learning as they go like we’re apt to do). Who’s ready for number one? Ok, since I can’t actually hear you guys (but clearly you’re all screaming “we are!”), I’ll continue. 1. It’s not always best to blindly follow one sentence tips in home improvement magazines without knowing if they’ll work for your system/house. For example, we

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How To Spray Paint Your Old Brass Door Knobs

You down with ORB? Yeah you know me. The deed has been done. After years (yes nearly two years!) of planning to upgrade every last old brass door knob in our entire house, we finally got ‘er done. Strike up the band! I can’t hear you. Can I at least get some cow bell? Yup, we removed 19 knobs with the intent of oil-rubbed bronzing (aka: ORBing) those babies. First we tried this method with a few exterior knobs, handles, and even a doorknocker a while back, just to see how they would hold up before doing the whole shebang (and I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t really have energy for the whole shebang up

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House Crashing: Lovely At Last

We’re working on wrapping up a few projects for you today – pics and details to come! – plus we have a well overdue house crash to share. It feels kinda unnecessary in this case, but we’ll say it out of formality: Meet Nicole (and her smiley son August). If that picture alone didn’t make you say “Wait, that’s Nicole from Making It Lovely!” then allow us to say “that’s Nicole from Making It Lovely.” You guys know we like to crash homes of all types (we’ve shared nearly fifty of them, from modern apartments and traditional homes to eclectic or retro spaces or crazy bright and colorful ones – each from big bloggers, small

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