Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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How To Make Wooden Play Money For Kids

Clara really seems to be into the concept of money lately. Not so much for using it to pay bills, but using it to count, stack, and stash in her pockets/purse. I’ve been digging up quarters and handing them over left and right (she’s thankfully well past the putting-things-in-her-mouth stage) but they always get lost. So I have one question: is there a vortex in our house that eats socks and loose change? Is Burger secretly saving up to buy a jar of peanut butter? Seriously, it’s a mystery. So instead of being fifteen bucks down after a few weeks of play, I figured I might as well attempt a little DIY alternative. Ok, and

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Eighteen Tips For Working Smarter, Not Harder

I’ve received a bunch of comment requests for an update on how we’re doing when it comes to finding the ever-elusive work/life balance that we’ve publicly proclaimed that we want to get a handle on this year (we never aspired to work nights, weekends, and even on vacation – and we only have ourselves to blame). So we thought it was a fun subject to tackle while we’re working away on the front porch (can’t wait to share an update for you guys tomorrow!). The scallops are a-tumbling down and the columns are getting boxed in. But back to the whole work/life balance battle. The first step in the not-working-every-second-of-every-day thing for us was definitely

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Fab Freebie: Sharing The Love

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** Over the last few days, the special referral account we set up has grown from $100 to over $300. And we’re about to turn it over to our winner… Crystal Anderson (who says she needs wall art “like no one’s business.”) Congrats! Last spring we curated a sale on Joss & Main, and we were psyched when they invited us back again this year – and agreed to a special perk for you guys (more on that in a sec). Getting the opportunity to reopen a little virtual decor store of sorts over there is always fun, and although we didn’t set the prices ourselves,

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How To Hang A Shelf Over The TV

Ding dong, the bare spot above the TV is dead. Remember how it used to look like this for a few years? And then we graduated to a bigger tv and kept an eye out for the right media cabinet for another year or so. And then we finally got here with the help of a $59 cabinet that we found at a thrift store… Whew. So glad it’s NNM (nekkid no more). Don’t mind that power strip on the ground, I’ve since shoved it behind the media cabinet to hide it. Dang it feels good to be a gangsta have a shelf there. We actually debated a bunch of options for above the TV

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Art For Under $50

Ok, not the whole world, but a good smattering of it. For those of you who watched our house tour video yesterday, you’ve seen a shot of these babies in action (and by these babies, I mean eight freshly framed prints that we hung in our hallway above the board & batten that we added). But here are some close ups with all the how-we-did-it deets. It was a really easy project actually. First, we bought an awesome calendar at Anthropologie on sale after the new year for $13 (gotta love how calendars go half price the second that January begins) but we had zero intention of using it in the traditional sense since we

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At Long Last, An Updated House Tour Video

It’s been over half a year since we shared our last video house tour, and since a bunch of you’ve been requesting an update, we finally cleaned the whole house shoved everything into our closets and made an all-one-take video. At first it seemed like we didn’t have that many new things to report, but then we realized that there were tons of changes since our previous tour (a freshly redone hall bathroom, a storage-room-turned-playroom, new lighting in the living room and dining room, lots of sunroom updates, a new fireplace facade and a fresh color in the kitchen, hallway board & batten, etc). So without further ado, let’s walk around the house together. I’ll

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Art And A Bookcase For The Guest Room

Remember this “Things That Are Awesome” print that we got at a local craft fair last Christmas by an amazing artist named Rachel (here’s her shop) with the intent of hanging it in the guest room (you know, so everyone can study all the things that are awesome while they stay)? Well, we finally got it framed and hung. This is actually an angle of the guest room that we haven’t shown for a long loong time. As in, this post from two summers ago is the last time we shared it. And then a year later we grabbed that big mirror and hung it over the mantel in the kitchen and a while later

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House Crashing: Quaint & Vine Covered

Holy cow you guys, I’m crazypants excited to share Bonnie’s sweet vine covered barn in Santa Ynez, California. It’s a home with some much happiness and charm squeezed in, I think anyone who drops in would feel right at home. So let’s drop in, shall we? Here’s sweet Bonnie to welcome us. I wish we could have crashed her in person to meet her ourselves, but her photos were too good not to share, so this is one of our more rare “virtual” house crashings. Let’s step inside, shall we? Her office area is set up right near the entryway, and everything from the desk and chair (both from Ikea) to the cool ladder in

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Fab Freebie: April Tools

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** Well the lucky April fool, er, person who’s getting the $500 gift card to the home improvement store of their choosing  – all thanks to Hometalk! – is… Rebecca (who says she and her husband really need a router table to change out some non-functional kitchen cabinets). Congrats! Nope, this isn’t a joke. Someone somewhere in the world is gonna win $500 this week, and it’s all thanks to Hometalk. It’s a free community where DIYers and pros can exchange projects and advice, which makes it a great spot to discover new ideas (everything from major remodels to easy cleaning tips pop up). The photo-centric

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Our Chart Topping DIY Music Video

It’s pretty clear from all the embedded music videos and song-reference-titled posts that John and I are music lovers. John even mentioned that he sings a lot in this post and we all know that I was a wee bit enamored with a certain rapper in my youth (an obsession that drove me to say the word “phat” on national TV). So when a musician friend here in Richmond casually invited us into their studio to mess around… well something magical happened. One thing led to another, and we ended up pouring all of our DIY passion into a DIYed song for you guys. Full of life lessons, house trials and tribulations, design rules that

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Window Shopping At Pottery Barn Outlet

First things first, we did a little spring cleaning so we have a fresh little header and a lighter-and-brighter site background up in hurr. Hope you guys love it as much as we do. Update: if it looks wonky on your computer, try refreshing and then clearing your browser’s cache/cookies/data :) Speaking of apologies, it’s been way too long since our last window shopping adventure. As most of you know, these aren’t paid or perked or anything – we just walk through a store with a camera and take photos of whatever inspires us for you guys. This post is actually long overdue (woops) but now that I’ve uploaded the pics and sat down to

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Adding A Timer To Our Kids Play Kitchen

Here’s a little recap of a few small projects and updates that we tackled – all in less than ten minutes a pop. Let’s call it a “tapas” post since they’re all bite sized morsels. And happily, they all actually worked, which isn’t always how it goes (sometimes the occasional this-should-be-quick project morphs into how-on-earth-is-this-taking-so-long?!). First we have some wooden tattoos I made. Yup, I bought these two little temporary tattoos (they say “breathe” and “delight”) at the same holiday craft fair that we mentioned here (they’re from a local artist named Suzanne, who actually chatted with me about how you can put them on various things beyond skin). They had just been sitting on

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