Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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A Blue Boy’s Nursery With Clouds & Stars

Hope you guys are having an awesome week-between-Christmas-and-New-Years. We’re soaking up some family time, along with sanding, priming, and painting our kitchen cabinets (it looks like a small paint bomb went off with some random gingerbread cookies among the fray), so we’re hoping to share our progress on Monday. But today we wanted to drop by with a makeover by Katy for her son Gabriel. This transformation was not only completed on a serious budget (she estimates that it was under $200, including big things like a bed and a dresser), it was also done in a rental (and we know you guys love to see those). Bravo to the landlord for letting her give

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Fab Freebie: An iPad Stocking Stuffer

We’re still surrounded by piles of wrapping paper, but we wanted to stop by with a special holiday giveaway for you guys. The prize? An iPad 2 along with a custom iPad cover from StickyGram! You may know StickyGram already from the cool magnets that they make for your Instagram photos, but they also create fun stuff like customized phone and iPad covers (the latter of which doubles as a stand). 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 (but we’ve got an international giveaway coming up right after

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Christmas Card Ideas You Can Photograph Yourself

Every year we like to drop in before everyone abandons their keyboards for Christmas (or have you already?) to share our Christmas card along with some gushy words of appreciation. So thar she blows: We had a few other ideas planned for our card this year (Clara gift-wrapping Burger, Clara riding her bike with a tiny Christmas tree on the back as Burger ran next to her, etc) but a combination of book deadlines, hospital decorating, showhouse meetings, and bad weather tied us up. Thank goodness for this shot that we miraculously got on the day that we told Clara she was going to have a little brother (I’ve filed it under “Christmas miracles”). And

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Hanging Ikea Floating Shelves In Our Kitchen

Let’s take some shelfies. You know, as opposed to selfies. If only we had Beyonce around to photobomb them, they’d be the best shelfies ever… The no-Beyonce consolation prize is that we finally got the Ikea floating shelves up in the kitchen, and it suddenly feels like we’re turning a corner. We still have a few major things on the list (like painting those cabinets) but the shelves make such a gigantic difference as opposed to the dark cabinetry that used to hang on either side of that window. Here’s how it looked a few weeks ago after we removed the wallpaper. And here it is from the same POV now, after removing the cabinets,

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Another “What Kind Of Accent Do You Have” Quiz…

Since hundreds of you guys got in on the fun with this American accent quiz, we couldn’t help but share the latest in online linguistic diagnostics – especially since this one seems to be pretty darn accurate. Which you’d hope, considering this quiz comes from the New York Times (and is adapted from some data from Harvard). Like the last one, it asks how you pronounce certain words… …but it also asks about what terms you use (firefly or lightning bug? semi-truck or tractor trailer? yard sale or garage sale?) to help pin down what area of the country your dialect is from. It generates a dialect “heat map” of the United States, and pinpoints

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Our Free Annual Calendar Download

This time of year we tend to feel behind on just about everything: projects, emails, present wrapping, cleaning, proper hygiene… but by some miracle, we’re actually ahead in one department: making our homemade family calendar. As many of you know, for the last five years we’ve whipped up a simple-yet-colorful calendar in Photoshop. A few of you (like Lauren and Alexandra) have even asked if we had this year’s ready yet (since we like to share the customizable template, in case you need a last minute gift). So I’m relieved to exclaim “the deed is done!” It doesn’t usually serve as our note-riddled family calendar (that’s what Sherry’s desktop planner is for) but it’s more

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Adding A Play Kitchen And Bookshelf To A Kids Room

Step right up to the wall ‘o fun! Sounds like a carnival ride, right? Don’t worry, there will be no clowns or motion sickness. It all started when we moved Clara’s crib out of her room, and shifted the dresser that used to be on this wall to the former crib wall (more on that here). Which left the wall to the right of the bed completely bare. So we decided to bring in a lot more fun to that blank space, now that there was room for it. Clara already has some baskets of toys and books along with a play-table where she loves to build castles and draw, but things like her play

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Switching A Hanging Microwave To A Range Hood

Hood, there it is. Well actually, for the last couple of weeks it has been more of a “hood… there it isn’t” situation in our kitchen. You may remember that we removed our over-the-range microwave before painting the kitchen and were thinking to get a 30 inch gas cooktop. Microwave’s the only appliance we’ve planned to replace as part of our Phase 1 kitchen makeover, since it was so front & center in the room, it crowded our stove, and we always seem to prefer range hoods over microwaves with vents when it comes to performance. So we replaced it with a stainless countertop microwave (more on that here) which we’ll eventually get “installed” into

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Making A Big Girl Room (No Crib!)

Well, Clara has officially made the full transition from crib to bed. We never expected her to sleep in her crib for so long (we’ve been “at the ready” with a big girl bed for over a year now, since many of her friends started making the switch back then), but this girl just loves to surprise us and truly adored her crib. And we adored that she was sleeping soundly all night long (even after being potty trained, she was able to hold it ’til the morning). So we didn’t want to rock the boat for all of our sakes, and decided to trust our doc when he said “let sleeping kids lie –

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Fab Freebie: Tool Blizzard

If your current tool collection could be described as “little to no accumulation” prepare yourself for the virtual snowstorm of power tools that may be coming your way. The good people of Ryobi are forecasting over $600 worth of tools this week. There’s a 10″ Sliding Compound Miter Saw. A Cordless Brad Nailer. And, best of all, a Ryobi ONE+ Ultimate Combo Kit that’s stocked with six tools (including 3 more saws!) that all work from the included 18V lithium ion battery. And if that doesn’t get your head spinning with ideas, there are plenty to get inspired by in the Ryobi Nation community – where you can enter to win even more tools. Please

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Our Holiday Makeover At The Children’s Hospital

Well, you can stick a candy cane in it, because one of our favorite seasonal projects ever is officially done! To recap, we were invited to help with a very special project: decorating a family waiting room at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. They contacted us in the hopes that we could volunteer our time to warm up the room so it’s more cozy and homey year-round, as well as to add some festive touches for the holiday season. Not only did it sound like a fun project, it had such a deserving purpose that we couldn’t wait to get started. Here’s what it looked like when we first visited. We set our

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Holiday Gift Guides For Guys, Gals & Kids

Big news, guys! We finished our makeover at the Children’s Hospital, and we can’t wait to share all the photos – hopefully on Monday! So today we thought we’d Friday things up with one giant gift guide for everyone who has been asking for it (last year we shared our picks for lads, ladies, and kiddos across three different posts, but this time we thought we’d just smash them all into one big gifty rundown). And in the interest of thriftiness, there are lots of under-$15 things along with a ton of $30-or-less finds. Here are a bunch of things that we’re digging for kiddos – along with a few baby items now that we

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