Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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What We Look For & Look Past While House Hunting

Q: I have a house-hunting question for you. What do you look for? What do you look past? Help! My main complaint of all the older homes that we’re looking at in our price range is that they all feel dated, but that seems to be what you guys look for. How do you know which dated houses are worth buying and which ones are lost causes? I keep worrying we’ll end up in a money pit! – Aviva (not the one from Housewives of NY). A: First of all, I’m glad you clarified that you’re not NYC Aviva. Haha. And second of all, we actually get this question a lot. So when it comes

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How To Frame Instagram Photos With Jewel Cases

“Who has two thumbs, an Instagram addiction, and just bought a bunch of jewel cases?” I think we all know the answer. THIS GUY had a little art project up his sleeves. Ever since jumping on the Insta-wagon back in April, I’ve been itching to get some of our photos printed. We just never had a place for them and were always a little wary of the quality through various printers. But a few weeks ago when I spotted a Facebook coupon for five free Instagram prints using Picplum, I ordered away (nothing to lose, right?) and I was pretty impressed with my handful of free 5×5″ prints… so, like the sucker they hoped I’d

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Fab Freebie: A Cultivated Kitchen

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** Sorry for the hit-and-miss quiz taking y’all. Apparently you guys enjoy a good quiz as much as we do! Anyways, the lucky (random) winner this week is… Kate Bateman (who was able to get a quiz result and said her “Traditional” diagnosis was almost spot on). Congrats! I bet most of you guys spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen over the last few days, and if it had you yearning to make some changes in there, you’ve stumbled onto the right giveaway. The folks behind some of our favorite stores (West Elm, Williams-Sonoma, and Pottery Barn) have a sister site chock full

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How To Make A DIY Window Shade in 15 Minutes

Remember when John mused about who would win the bathroom race (he wanted to frame out the mirror and I was on the DIY window shade train) here? Well, chugga chugga, baby. Momma won. We got the fabric at an outlet called Mary Jo’s a while back (here’s an affiliate link to it on amazon for folks in other areas). We threw Clara a wormy birthday party with her two favorite colors – pink & orange – so when it came to picking out the fabric for the hall bathroom, where we log some serious potty and bath time with her, I couldn’t resist adding some fun with the bold patterned fabric that featured a few of Clara’s favorite

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October Superlatives: Better Late Than Never…

We’re nearly a week away from December, which makes rewinding all the way back to the beginning of October a little strange, but since a few book tour stops threw our productivity for a loop this month, our usual wrap-up of the previous month (in yearbook-style superlatives) is coming to you a bit late (ok, way late) in the middle of Thanksgiving break. As always you can read back through January of 2011 right here in just 21 posts instead of 700. Oh yeah, and we’ve also snuck in a clue about Monday’s giveaway at the bottom. Hope you guys are having a great Thanksgiving weekend with the fam! Most Adventurous: Sherry, for braving our

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Making A Thanksgiving Gratitude Chalkboard

You probably know of our little Thanksgiving tradition of filling up our homemade “Thanks Jar” with gratitude notes throughout November. We wanted to keep the tradition going this year, but our book tour kept us away most of the month and it got away from us. So this weekend we decided to sneak this tradition in right at the buzzer… while putting a new spin on it thanks to our new chalkboard. The word art at the top of the board was a joint effort. Sherry searched something like “pretty script” on Pinterest and tried her best to imitate what she saw for the word “thanks.” A curlicue here. A flourish there. Then I got

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Birfday Bidness

As you guys might know, last Thursday was John’s 31st birthday and West Elm in Houston whipped up this amaaaaaazingly DIY-riffic cake for him. #edibletapemeasure #umyeahtheressawdust Every year we write birthday posts about what we got each other and this year John actually got (well, is getting, since I’m letting him pick it out) a nail gun (more info on that when we get it). So because I don’t have photos of him holding up various presents like we’ve shared in former years like this post from last year) I thought I’d over-share slash cheese it up on a Tuesday afternoon with a little brain dump of seven things I love about John (surprise, honey!).

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TV In The Bedroom? We Say Yes.

We’re bringing someone else into the bedroom. And it’s… gasp… a TV. We were originally anti-TV-in-the-bedroom, so we know it’s not for everyone (and it’s downright sinful to some) but we only have one TV in our entire house – in the living room – and this guy was just sitting unused in the playroom (ever since we upsized the living room one since he wasn’t large enough to actually see from the sofa)… so we’ve gone and changed our minds. Haha. There’s actually a real reason behind the decision: more and more we’ve been thinking about how we have issues with work/life balance and it’s hard for us to “shut off.” Which is why

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Fab Freebie: Save Room For Cake

***This giveaway is now closed. See who won below!*** Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Our lucky winner this week is… N Shirley (whose favorite dessert “to both make and eat is Virginia Apple Pudding – even makes the whole house smell good!”) Sounds delicious. Congrats! We’ve had a few questions about why all contests aren’t open to international readers, so here’s that info for you. We actually ask every single vendor who approaches us to do a giveaway if they’ll ship internationally and we remind them that the more folks are included, the more exciting it is for everyone. We LOVE you all and always want to open our giveaways to as many people as possible! It

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How To Frost A Window

We wish we had a giant bathroom update to share, but we’re at that phase of the project where some of the bigger things have been checked off (building a shelf, painting the walls) and a few little mid-point upgrades are on the agenda since we’ve been flying around a lot lately (10 flights in 11 days!!). But now that we’re back home, the next bathroom installment will be bigger (either framing out the mirror and making a shade from some amazingly bold fabric that I’m obsessed with) so hopefully this tides you guys over. And since I hate to mention “amazingly bold fabric that I’m obsessed with” without showing it to you… behold: Remember it

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NYT, RVA, Chi-town & the T-Dot

Quick note: Tomorrow (Saturday) we’ll be in Dallas at 11am at the West Elm on 5307 East Mockingbird Lane for cookies, cocoa and a book signing (more info here). We’d love to see ya there! We’re back with a little book/life/tour update (#warning it’s long). Admittedly, it’s sooner than we had originally planned (our last one was a week ago), but lots has happened and we’re just brimming with news and pictures so we’ve basically overflowed. Somebody get a mop. Or maybe a tissue. Because we’ve gotta start with some crazy awesome / amazingly humbling news. We just learned that our book has become an instant New York Times bestseller. I can’t believe I just

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Paint Storage & Pegboards In Our Basement Workshop

Go navy! Please don’t misinterpret that previous sentence as a taking of sides in the long-standing Army / Navy feud. I’m 100% neutral on the rivalry. And if anything, my dad was in Army. But what am I doing stirring up trouble? This post is about the basement (and it’s up early since we’re on a flight)… so let’s dive in where we left off: this hot mess of a shelf. This is where we’ve been storing haphazardly placing paint cans and other paint-can-shaped items. It has been the very antithesis of organization for the nearly 24 months that we’ve lived here. In fact, these are two boxes of items that haven’t even been unpacked

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