Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Painting The Back Of A Glass Kitchen Cabinet

As many of you know, I recently snagged some affordable drinking glasses that we love so much, which spurred a full fledged glass-fronted cabinet makeover here at Casa Petersik. Here’s what our glass fronted corner cabinet looked like before my little spring update: We love that it was full of plates, glasses and bowls that we use all the time (we’re all about enjoying our servingware on a regular basis so nothing feels too precious or underused) so of course when I picked up those new glasses I made a promise to John that they wouldn’t be tucked away for “special occasions” and that we’d use them on the regular. And what better way to

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Two Magazine Photoshoots At Our House

It’s a crazy-but-we-wouldn’t-have-it-any-other-way day here at Casa Petersik. We actually have a photography crew from BHG here (!) to shoot our newly transformed nursery and our recently renovated bathroom for two different publications: Kitchen + Bath Makeovers and Do It Yourself magazine. Fun, right? We’re all geeked out about it. We’re super excited to watch the stylists work their propping magic (how do they make bottles of soap look so good?) and we actually know the photographer Erik Johnson since he shot the rest of our house a while back for a three-issue article in Do It Yourself (see them here, here, and here). In fact here we are with Erik and the crew from

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Finding Colorful Glass Cups On Sale

Many of you know that I have a giant binder full of clear plastic sleeves where I shove a ton of tear sheets from magazines, catalogs and other places that inspire me (read more about how I organize that magical binder right here). And one ripped corner of a magazine that has been in my binder pretty much since its inception has been an image from Elle Decor with gorgeous vintage looking glasses in green, yellow, blue and pink with recessed designs on them that create a light and almost sea-glass-ish effect. They’re credited as being from this super swanky store (which doesn’t happen to have a shot of them on their site- boo) and

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