Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Fab Freebie: Worth The Wait

“Life should be lived beautifully every single day” is the mantra that drives the founder of Waiting on Martha, the virtual boutique where one of you will be getting $300 to spend this week. From home decor and entertaining to jewelry and kids, Mandy has collected a wide variety of beautiful things, with plenty of pretty, shiny, and quirky goods in the mix. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). You can also get 15% off with code YHL15 through April 15th. This giveaway is available to anyone anywhere! Click To View Rafflecopter Widget

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Showhouse Home Office, Butler’s Pantry, and Bedroom

As of 5:30pm yesterday, our second big Homearama Showhouse deadline was hit. Phew. The builder was throwing a preview party at the house so everything had to be done, cleaned, and ready to be shown off to a whole slew of people (realtors, prospective buyers, generous local companies who donated furnishings/accessories to this cause, etc). Heck, the weather even cooperated in the final seconds and gave us this nice photo op. It was kinda weird yet exciting to have the place alive with people, music, and food. They brought in caterers to show off the kitchen/appliances, and Sherry and I pretty much gorged since we had been running around in hyper-drive all day. There were

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The Process Of Decorating A Showhouse

For the last few weeks we have eaten, slept, and breathed all things showhouse. We knew it was going to be a lot of work, but I’ll be the first to admit that we completely underestimated how much time, effort, and – well, shopping – it would take to turn a 3,500 square foot blank-ish slate into a lived-in-ish looking home. In two weeks, no less. So as you can imagine we’ve pretty much been camped out there. Or driving back and forth with a car full of stuff, unloading it, placing it on various surfaces, and repeating. We thought most of the major hurdles had been cleared after choosing fixtures and finishes over the

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Messy House Tour 2014

Since you guys have enjoyed the past messy house tour videos that we’ve shared (like this one from our last house in 2011), we seized the opportunity to remind everyone that we’re not all carefully folded towels and meticulously placed pillows 24/7 (not even close). With our attention focused mostly on the showhouse & some last minute nursery updates, many of our other house projects have been put on hold (some are literally halfway done) and a handful of rooms have quickly devolved into chaos. And when your house is a mess, why not video tape it for the whole internet to see? A few notes: There is no rapping in this video. I am

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Painting The Nursery Closet Door Bright Green

At two weeks from my due date we’re checking off a few more lingering nursery updates, like painting the closet door a bright happy color, organizing the clutter within… … making/hanging some more art, and changing our minds in the curtain arena (you know we love a good final-hour switcheroo). The green closet door was heavily influenced by Clara, who kept saying “my baby will like a colored door like mine but not pink” – and since a bold green door was originally in our plan back in January (which we mentioned to Clara, hence her obsession) we decided to stop hemming and hawing and just go for it. After hanging our apple-green curtains and

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And Now For A Household Crafting Challenge

The other night Sherry and I came up with the idea to challenge each other to craft something using objects around our house – the catch being that the OTHER person gets to choose the objects. It wasn’t necessarily a competition, but we still came up with some ground rules: You can use anything to make the craft, but the three chosen items must be incorporated in some way. The “challengee” may choose one of the items before seeing the other two chosen by the “challenger.” No money can be spent. The project will be shared on the blog, no matter how awful it turns out. We rock-paper-scissored and I lost, so I was up

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The Girls Bedroom In The Showhouse

We spent the weekend checking off a bunch of hands-on projects for the girls room in the showhouse. It’s definitely still looking sparse, and is far from done, so I’m sure it’ll keep evolving right up until our deadline. The bed needs to be raised and we have a colorful throw to add Linens need to be ironed and we have a custom bolster that we’ll layer in there too Colorful fabric window treatments will be hung as soon as they’re in We might switch out the end table – not sure yet… We have a soft blue lamp and a bunch of other accessories to add to tie things together But we did manage

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Furnishing The Showhouse

At first I had typed the original “I like to move it, move it” lyrics but then I realized that I don’t really enjoy the moving process at all, so it was sort of an unpleasant deja vu moment when we started unloading furniture into the Homearama showhouse on Monday. But my glass half-full version of the situation is: we’re finally getting to the furnish the showhouse! Note: for anyone wondering what the heck this showhouse is, and how it benefits Habitat for Humanity, click here and here for more info. With almost everything done construction-wise in the house, we greeted a truck from Green Front Furniture (the local place loaning pieces to many of

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How To Hang New Lights In The Hallway

From moment one of seeing this house, something about the view of a series of three lights all in a row(ish) in the upstairs hallway made us inexplicably excited. Just call it “the tri-light zone” effect. We just knew that arrangement had serious potential. You know, once we looked past the old carpeting and the blue trim. The existing lights were a little undersized for us (pictures don’t do it justice, but this is a 33 foot long hallway!), so although we considered spray painting them another color (oil-rubbed bronze? red? navy?), I worried it’d make them look a bit more gothic cathedral than we wanted. Plus, all three of them were crooked, one of

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House Crashing: Joyful & Happy Go Lucky

Can you believe it has been a month since our last house crashing adventure? And while February’s house tour was from across the pond, this one was local, so we got to stop by and soak up all of the details in person. Meet Becky and Brian (and their dog Fergie). They live just outside of Richmond with their two daughters and this charming red door. It’s Heritage Red by Benjamin Moore – and she got that charming “Hello” decal here. When you walk inside, there’s a room to your right that they call the music room. Let’s just say that the yellow piano, which Becky painted herself, had my heart immediately. It was Brian’s

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Fab Freebie: Stealing Home

The thrill of the hunt is one thing, but what about the thrill of the steal? Decor Steals serves ’em up daily in the form of sales events that promise vintage-inspired and industrial chic home accessories, lighting, and furniture at up to 80% off retail (you can be first in line thanks to their daily deal announcement). And this week someone will score $500 to spend there. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available to residents of the United States & Canada. Click To View Rafflecopter Widget

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How To Make A Magnet Board

Let me tell you a tale of a girl who used to be organized, oh…. about four years ago. Since Clara came along, well, it has been a slippery slope. I’ve kept notes to myself in various notebooks, on my phone, on post its, and have scribbled in every square inch of my day planner. I’m almost never sure what I need to do next since there are so many active lists competing for my attention these days. So when John and I were asking ourselves what our home office needs to make it as functional as possible, it was about two seconds before I was pulling a Mary Katherine Gallagher and jumping around and

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