Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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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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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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