Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Kid’s Views On The Coolest House

During our book tour stop in Palo Alto, someone brought us the funniest gift. It wasn’t a ceramic animal. It wasn’t cupcakes. It wasn’t stickers for Clara. It was a thin set of stapled paper that looked like this: Inside was this note: “Dear Sherry & John (And Clara & Burger), I have been a loyal blog reader since Fall 2010. I am currently a teacher and I thought it could be fun for you to see what kids think makes a house comfortable, fun, and exciting to live in. Therefore, I had them freewrite about their future house or their dream home. Enjoy! – Jacqueline” The dozen or so entries are sweet, imaginative and

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How To Make A Floating Frame

Let’s make a floating frame, shall we? I did a little frame hack that’s super easy and free if you have a few basic items on hand – or only a few bucks even if you don’t. So for anyone out there who likes the look of a floating glass frame but doesn’t want to pay around twenty bucks for one, you can probably use an old frame that you already have to whip one up. First, I colored this cool printable that I mentioned in that original art-hanging post (which I got here, printed on card stock at home, and colored with regular old colored pencils). Then I was about to run out and

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DIY Valentines For School

We made some easy Valentine’s Day goody bags for our daughter’s classmates. The first thing we did was troll the aisles of Target (we hit up The Dollar Spot, and Valentine’s Candy section, and the kid’s party aisle, just to check out everything that was left). In The Dollar Spot in the front of the store, we found these cute little clear bags in a set of 20 for $1. Sold! Then we walked over to the party aisle, where they sell lots of kid-items in bulk, like stickers and markers and even glow sticks. After mulling over all of our options, we settled on some little boxes of washable markers, which were $2 for

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Choosing The Right Lamp Shade Pendant

I kinda want to jump on The Voice bandwagon. Not in the sense that I want my shot at getting Adam Levine to turn his chair for me – at which point I would look him dead in the eye and say “keep your hands off my woman, Levine!” (it never hurts to lay clear boundaries with a guy like him). I want to jump on the bandwagon in the sense that The Choice (spinny chairs meets dating), The Taste (cooking) and The Face (modeling) have. Only my spin-off would be called The Shade and it would be a competition to find “the next great light for Clara’s big girl room.” And no one would

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Avoiding Buyer’s Remorse & Purchasing Paralysis

Q: “How do you know when you’re investing in the right piece for a room? I’m paralyzed to pull the trigger and then later realize the table, curtains, or rug I’m currently eying aren’t ‘the answer’ for my room and then spend years regretting them.” – Melissa We get a lot of questions like this one. So after around six years spent decorating two houses on a pretty modest budget, with a nice heaping portion of mistakes and trial and error worked in there, here’s what we’ve learned. We definitely don’t get it right every time. Sometimes we’re too risky, and sometimes we’re too safe, and sometimes the proportion or the size of something is

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Fab Freebie: Be Jeweled

***This giveaway has reached is now closed – see who won below!*** Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! And an especially happy one to our randomly selected, lucky winner who goes by the name of… Oona (who will likely celebrate tonight with dinner at “a lovely vegan restaurant”). Congrats Oona! We love celebrating Valentine’s Day with you guys by giving away some free jewelry, and this year Sherry’s especially stoked because the prize is coming from none other than Kendra Scott – one of her favorite places to request that I buy her earrings for various occasions (like the past two Christmases). Kendra Scott has definitely earned me a few husband points, so this (are you ready

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Hanging Small Wall Ledges For Flash Cards, Postcards, Or Books

Aw yeah, we’re living on the ledge. We’ve been waiting to hang our postcard shelves from our first house’s office for over two years and we finally found the right spot for them. Ba-dow: We detailed the whole how-we-made-them process here (you should click that just to see how tiny Clara was) so here’s how we adapted them for this space: we measured how wide the dresser that would sit under them was (we thought they’d look top-heavy and odd if they were a foot longer, which they were at first) we lopped off the extra length on a miter saw, so they were all 2″ narrower than the dresser that sits under them we

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The Wild Wild West

Can you believe it’s been three weeks since our last tour update? But even though you haven’t heard much about it, we’ve been on the road (and in the air) quite a lot lately. It took us nearly to the end of our book tour, but we finally made it all the way to the other side of the United States. So let’s dive right in with our recap of our stops in all three west coast states. #warningitslong We started off in Tacoma, Washington at the Tacoma Home & Garden Show on Friday, January 25th. The people running the show did a great job getting the word out that we’d be there, even scoring

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Using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint And Soft Wax

Dudes and dudettes, I finally tried chalk paint. And yes, I just broke out dudettes. Gutsy move for 2013, eh? Anyway, many of you guys have asked if I’ve given Annie Sloane chalk paint a go, and now that I have, here are the details. First of all, here’s how we used it: John and I brainstormed a few possibilities for the table that we cut down and the two thrift store chairs that we found in West Virginia (they were $8 each) for a while. Here are a few alternatives that we tossed out there: red chairs with a white table red table with white chairs navy table with red chairs navy table with

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Window Shopping: Adler Adoration

It’s been way too long since our last window shopping adventure. As most of you know, these aren’t paid or perked or anything – we just walk through a store with a camera and take pics of whatever inspires us for you guys. This post is actually a few months overdue (woops) but now that I’ve uploaded the pics and sat down to write this post I’m all school-girl-ish again. See, I actually stepped foot into my first Jonathan Adler store ever a few months back (while we were in DC for a signing up the street) and I was OBSESSED. Believe me, it’s not a good look. I get all squealy and grinny and

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Fab Freebie: What’s In A Name?

*** This giveaway is now closed – see who won below! *** After 10,000 interesting name origin stories, random.org has selected our winners as… Beth (who says “my dad picked it out and to this day I’m whole heartily a daddy’s girl.”) and Chelsea (who’s name story is: “My parents got my name from the 1981 movie, On Golden Pond. ‘Chelsea’ was played by Jane Fonda”) Congrats! I realize from the name Online Fabric Store, you might have trouble guessing what this online store sells, so allow me to solve that mystery for ya. Fabric! And seemingly every kind of fabric – like upholstery, decor, quilting, apparel and even garden fabric. Which means that this

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How To Make No Sew Ikat Curtains For A Kids Room

Some people who went for a pattern like this on the daybed might go for something neutral and simple for the windows (like breezy white curtains). Others might pluck one of the colors from the blanket and go for that (bold red cotton panels, taupey-gray velvet ones, etc). We might have been tempted to go with something more neutral and safe if the room wasn’t meant for our color loving kiddo (so the bedding could “be the star”) but since it’s Clara’s new space, and we love kid zones with a few layered patterns and colors, we decided to just go to our favorite local fabric outlet (U-Fab here in Richmond) and see what grabbed

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