Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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The Perfect Light Gray Paint Color: Moonshine By Benjamin Moore

It was January when we painted three test swatches of gray on our dining room walls. It took us just days to pick the color but apparently took us, yeah, um, FOUR MONTHS to finally paint the room. I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing – our painting laziness or my rockin’ farmer’s tan. Anyway, I searched my brain for some sort of an excuse for the dining room paint delay. Maybe we were too tired at the end of the day in January that we spent painting the living room and hallway the same color? Or we were too distracted by completing the guest room for Sherry’s mom’s February visit? Or we were too consumed

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Budget Blooms: Birthday Leftovers

You may have noticed a bouquet in the middle of the table for Clara’s party two weeks ago. Well, sadly some of those blooms are no longer among the living: But there are a few that are still going strong, so I decided to drop them into three of my favorite vases (from Ikea a while back) for this happy little effect: And yes, they’re on the windowsill in our bathroom. Just because I realized that we have never had any flowers in that room (there are all sorts of “firsts” in this house for me – including flowers in the bathroom) so I had to revel in the first-bathroom-blooms occurrence. It feels good to

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Full Circle

This is a free Dremel that I got from the DIY Network. I know what this looks like. Like I’ve broken our no-free-swag rule. But this was given to me back in 2003, long before our self-imposed policy took effect (hence its worse-for-wear appearance). Heck, it even pre-dates our blog, our first home purchase, and even our relationship (we didn’t meet until 2004, and didn’t start dating ’til 2005). So now you’re probably wondering what the single, 21-year-old, apartment-dwelling, college student version of me did to deserve a free tool from a home improvement network. Well, it’s because I was currently rocking the prestigious title of “intern.” That’s me in August of 2003 on the

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How To Use Acrylic Medium To Glue A Large Print To A Canvas

Woo to the hoo. Our bedroom horse art arrived, so we’re back to share the whole how-to-affix-them-to-canvas adventure. The title might have already given it away, but even though they arrived on Monday afternoon (spoiler alert) it took two attempts to get ‘er done in this instance. First I went with the ol’ spray adhesive route (for $4 from JoAnn with a coupon), since I used this for anything and everything back in my art school days (it was like the duct tape of our world). It’s usually a great candidate since it’s acid free (which means it’s good for not ruining prints) and it’s listed as “all purpose” and “permanent” right on the label.

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A Sleek & Happy House Tour

This house just makes me smile, so of course I had to House Crash the heck out of it and share it with you guys. Behold- the eye candy that is Kelly Moore’s amazing casa. You might know her from her killer photography blog (all of her DIY-related posts can be found here) or her genius line of camera bags. But you don’t really know a person until you poke around their house, so let’s get to it. We’ll start in the kitchen, where Kelly and her husband whipped up some extra thick homemade concrete counters (and shared a tutorial right here). Everything from the happy painted cabinets to the apron sink and the sleek

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Outdoor Updates & A Tour

Ok, so lots of people (me included) found this original exterior tour of our yard a bit hard to follow. Our first house was nice and simple. We could describe the back and the front and the sides and call it a day with this ol’ post of yore, which even included this little sketch: But this house is just waaay more complicated. Even though both lots are about the same size (almost an acre) this one is a lot less long and narrow than the last one. It’s more fat and square-ish. And it has a lot more quirks like this little alley between the original part of the house and the addition in

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How To Sew A Table Runner

I’m not a runner, but I can make one. I used to run track and cross country in middle school and high school. I actually ran a 5:09 mile once (with the help of some downhill portions of a course and the fact that I was like 80 lbs). It happened once and never again (I usually clocked in between 6:20 and 7:10). But those days are gone (due partially to an ankle injury but mostly to laziness). Now I only run when I’m being chased. Or when I lose track of the baby. But making a runner? That I can do. You guys actually got a sneak peek of my recent runner creation in

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Fab Freebies: Family Ties

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Although only 3 will win free prints, everyone can score free shipping on Genuinely Yours orders before June 30th with code YHL2011FS. And according to random.org, our trio of winners are… Alicia (whose family all shares their mom’s dark eyes), Sondra (who feels like she gave birth to three exact clones of her husband) and Erica (whose first two kids have her eyes, but the third got daddy’s). Congrats ladies! This giveaway combines some of our favorite things: silhouettes, colorful art, and family (if there were a ceramic animal or a map involved, our heads might explode). So needless to say, this prize

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My Little Ponies

First, let’s appreciate how fun My Little Ponies really were. I think I had around 6 as a child. And it was magical. But in house-news-that’s-somewhat-related-to-the-throwback-mention-above, after what feels like months (ok, it actually has been months) we’re finally ready to fill the empty wall space on either side of the sink nook in our bedroom with something. And since I had fun making a little Pinterst inspired painting (but then resolutely decided that I didn’t want it to live in the bedroom)… It was time for John and I to have a few long chats about what we really wanted to fill the empty space across from the bed (no pressure, we’ll just wake

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Our Weekly Baby Photo Project Continues

Clara’s first birthday last Saturday made for a natural conclusion to 52 weeks of fabric-filled photo-y goodness (click here to see ’em larger). But we’re going to keep going. Kind of. Before we move on to that though, let’s talk about the last photo-filled year. We’re just as surprised as anyone that we managed to maintain our weekly ritual fifty-two times in a row. In fact, today is the first Friday in 12 months that we haven’t busted out the camera, a yard of discount fabric, and a white-onesied Clara, and then used Photoshop to add the week number to her onesie after the fact. It’s kinda sad in a way. But just looking at

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How To Make A Geometric Painting On A Canvas

What is it about painting that makes me feel all frenchified and beret-worthy? Anyway, I finally got around to painting one of the giant (and deeply discounted) 40 x 30″ canvases that we scored for $23 from Michael’s thanks to 50% off with an additional 25% off on top of that (more details about how that happened at the end of this post). Ever since discovering this inspirational poster design from here (thanks to my good friend Pinterest) I knew I wanted to adapt it a bit. You know, go wide instead of vertical and have some fun with a few $2 paint samples from Lowe’s (total spent on paint: $9 for three pots which

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How To Build A Fence

As several of you noticed in Monday’s party recap, our patio area boasted another feature on Saturday (beyond more balloons and little kids than you can count). Yep, there’s a new 6′ privacy fence going on back there. When did it get installed? In the sliver of days between completing the patio and hosting the party. But time was so tight that I didn’t get to blog about it until after the bean’s shindig (aka: today). Here’s how it all went down up. Throughout my patio-ing, Sherry regularly reminded that me she wanted to beef up the fence situation between us and the neighbor before Clara’s birthday party. Her goal was to prevent this big

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