Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Fab Freebie: Richmond Or Bust!

***THIS GIVEAWAY HAS REACHED ITS 10,000 ENTRY CAP AND IS NOW CLOSED – SEE WHO WON BELOW!*** And our VERY lucky winner this week is… Hallie (who knows that Belle Isle was once a fishing village for the Powhatan Indians – something even we hadn’t heard). Congrats – and see you in a few weeks! We’re spending today with the family for the holiday, but we had to drop in with our big giveaway for you guys. See, when we found out we’d be speaking at this year’s R.Home for the Holidays event on November 8th (which we’ve gone to for the past four years for fun, so it’s really crazy to think that we’ll

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Adventures In DC

Ok, so this random Friday post is 25% about a quick little project, 25% about some house crashing-ish shots, 25% about general Clara cuteness, and 25% about Jewel. Yes, the singer. Who’s ready? It all began with a weekend trip to DC to visit my BFF Cat (who John and I set up with John’s cousin Travis and then they got married and had two kiddos- so yes I’m now related to my BFF). She, Travis, and their cute kiddos Elsa and Edison live in Arlington, Virginia and took us into the city to check out the National Aquarium in DC (John’s sister Katie along with her two sons John and Ben and her hubby

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How We Liked Renting A Bagster Dumpster

So. My basement workshop. I owned up to how messy it was a few months ago. Then building Clara’s dollhouse prompted me to tidy it up a smidge – as in, look you can actually see some of the floor. And then the deck happened and it all went to crap again. A big sawdusty, scrap wood cluttered pile of it. But I made a promise to myself that once the deck was done I was going to take care of this issue once and for all. And I’m happy to report that after many hours, many calls, and some serious scrap-wood-carrying, some major progress has been made. My secret? The Bagster. I walked by

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Tour Time

UPDATE: This post isn’t updated with recent tour info, so click here to see our official regularly-updated tour page. It’s heeeeeere. That fateful day when we finally get to reveal the finalized tour dates for our book, fresh from our publisher’s mouth (er, email). A few things to note are: 1. If it were humanly possible we would parasail/glacier climb/spelunk to every last crevice of the globe to thank each one of you personally for reading our blog. But given all the factors that go into planning and executing one of these things, we’re extremely grateful to be able to slide through all of the places they’ve scheduled us – especially since this was originally

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September Superlatives: Trains & Travels

October is officially here, but before we dive into another month of projects, it always helps us keep the ol’ momentum up to take an appreciative look back on all of our happenings from last month – everything from making over Granny’s bathroom and building a train board to making some tables into ottomans and celebrating our 5th blogging anniversary. And since we love to throw in something never-before-seen, we’re actually revealing the first stop on our book tour below. So here’s everything in our usual weird yearbook-superlative-style that definitely inspires us to keep plugging away (plus it makes browsing our archives a lot easier – you can read back through January of 2011 right

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Using Personal Keys To Make Shadowbox Art

Last week during the blogiversary madness, there were requests for more fast & *almost* free projects – especially the ones that renters and homeowners alike can whip out in under an hour. So here’s an under $10 project that I took ten minutes, tops. Do you get the hidden meaning behind the keys? Look a little closer. See how there’s one tall key, one medium key, and two small keys (one of which is horizontal while one’s vertical)? Well, that’s our little key family. Haha. Burger’s the horizontal guy. When I saw a bowl of keys for $2 at an antique store on the way home from Granny’s, I stared at them for a while,

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Fab Freebie: Portrait Of A Fido

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** And the lucky random pet parent who’s about to get a cheery pet portrait is… Kirstin (who’s excited to get a portrait of Lola, her “adorable Boston Terrier/English Bulldog mix”). Congrats Kirstin AND Lola! UPDATE: Kirstin sent us a photo of Lola. Isn’t she a heartbreaker? Somebody turned six last week around here. And his name rhymes with Schmurger (video evidence to come on Young House Life – we just have to upload it). Anyway, in honor of that exciting canine milestone, we’re hosting an exciting canine giveaway, courtesy of our good friend (and fellow Virginian) Lesli Devito. She’s got an incredible knack for turning

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Digging Up A Planting Bed To Plant More Grass

Oh man, we were busy little yard bunnies this Sunday. As in, we probably logged about four hours out there. We started while Clara napped, which ended up being three hours (woot!) and then we each switched off watching Clara while the other finished a few things up. The mission? To have more than a few tiny slivers of grass in our backyard. See how that giant weedy-looking planting bed robs the yard of some great Burger & bean-friendly running-around area? The pictures don’t do it justice, but the planting bed is at least fifteen feet wide and the giant stick-like butterfly bush is around eight or nine feet tall. You think I’m kidding, right?

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Aquatober (31 Days of Drinking Nothing But Water)

It should come as no surprise that my love of soda t-shirts translates to a general love of soda itself. I know it’s not good for me, but since I avoid other vices (alcohol, cigarettes, Honey Boo Boo) I usually give myself a pass on the soda thing. But not this month. Nope. For the month of October I’m swearing off all beverages except for good ol’ H2O. I actually started this tradition back in college in an effort to both detox myself for the month AND hopefully create a lasting healthier habit of choosing water over sugary drinks. Being the marketing student that I was at the time, I dubbed my little effort “Aquatober.”

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Blogiversary 5: Charts, Graphs & A Little Beyonce

As our fifth blogiversary week comes to a close, we must first dole out a giant thank you to everyone for the sweetness (oh the humanity) and the laughs (oh the hilarity) and – well – for taking our little annual poll that we dropped into Monday’s post. This year we had over 30,000 entries. Wowza. Thank goodness Google helped me crunch the numbers (a stark contrast to our first blogiversary poll where I copied and pasted all 199 comment responses into a spreadsheet by hand). Obviously it wasn’t a scientific study, but we did come out with some fun facts and figures that we thought would be fun to share here courtesy of some

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Blogiversary 5: Goal Tending

It’s time for some annual goal declaring (because nothing lights a fire under your keister like a big ol’ public proclamation). Let’s do this thang. Goal #1: Embrace The Crazy (aka Be Flexible): After five years of blogging and over two years of both of us doing it full time, we’ve learned that no two days are ever the same. But this upcoming year is about to get crazier than anything we’ve ever experienced. Between the release of our book on Nov 6th and a 15 city+ book tour along with some secret side projects that we can’t wait to reveal to you guys (no mom, that’s not a we’re pregnant euphemism) the next 365

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Blogiversary 5: Post Apocalypse

With over 2,300 posts under our belts, it’s becoming a Herculean task to read all the way back through our archives (although several of you deserve an “I survived the YHL archives and all I got was this lousy bumper sticker” bumper sticker). So we’re using our fifth blogiversary as an excuse to pull out some highlights from those 260 weeks of content. Sit back and enjoy this somewhat weird trip down memory lane full of firsts, favorites, and fun times. First Makeover Reveal: Even before the kitchen reno that started this whole site, our first before and after was actually our laundry nook in November 2007 (since the kitchen was still very much a

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