Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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House Crashing in Cincinnati!

Quick update: Today we’ll be getting cozy in Boston at the West Elm on 160 Brookline Avenue for cookies, cocoa, and a book signing at 6pm. More info here. We’d love to see ya there! We shared a sneak peek of this House Crashing adventure in our post about Cincinnati, and we finally sifted through the 200+ photos that we took to get this post together for ya. So let’s let ourselves in, shall we? Did you see the little welcome note right on that happy yellow door? So cute, eh? And I love the three glass panes in that door. As for who lives here, meet Rick and Jessie. They were literally the sweetest

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When Acorn Crafts Go Terribly Wrong

Ack, we’re painting the hall bathroom, and we can’t wait to finish, shoot pics, and share them with you guys! But since that’s still in progress, I thought this stellar example of things not always working out might make you guys smile. We always get asked “what happens if you try something and it doesn’t work?” and I always say “we blog about it, of course!” You know, like this and this and this. We love sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we can totally relate to a failed craft project or ten. So here we go… In Richmond it has been raining men. If by men I mean acorns. Seriously, those

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Let’s Go Behind The Scenes (Waaay Behind)

Ahhh! Our book baby is officially out there in the world. Holy cow it’s crazy. We thought once the book was actually released this might feel real but it still feels like it’s a big game of make believe – despite all of these awesome photos that you guys keep tweeting and Facebooking to us (anything with a dog, a baby, or a funny face = awesomeville). And ever since those early days of cobbling this labor of love together, we’ve been itching to share some behind the scenes peeks, so it’s an understatement to say that the 27 photos in this post were burning a hole in our pockets for nearly a year. So

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Fab Freebie: Book Worms Rejoice

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** So many book-hungry people out there! This giveaway hit its 10,000 cap within 24 hours, so we’re already back with a winner. The lucky worm is… Melissa (who keeps her favorite books in a bedside cabinet, a living room end table, and on a special display shelf in the family room. She believes “all good book nerds have them in all parts of the house!”). Congrats Melissa! Our book release is officially here! Woo hoo! And we’re celebrating by giving away books this week. But not just our book. Lots o’ books. In fact, some of them will even come signed by some pretty awesome

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How To Hide A Cracked Tile With A DIY Shelf

Aw yeah, it’s hall bathroom time, baby. We have about five phases of updates that we plan to share as we go, so here’s phase one. We’ve been hiding something in our hall bathroom. What? You thought that giant empty frame was just there because it looked good? Nah. To better understand this skeleton in the closet atop the toilet, might I refer you to this 20-month old post by Sherry entitled “Sometimes I Go Crazy.” It’s about how Sherry got a wild hair and busted out one of several extraneous towel bars that were un-centered/overkill/everywhere in our hall bathroom. Thankfully we were able to cover up the resulting tile scab with some new trim,

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House Crashing: Classic & Natural With A Twist

Quick note Book holla! -We’re publishing this post early since we’ll be at our stop in Wilton, CT this morning and then we’ll be at Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ at 5:30 pm (and staying as late as it takes to hang/sign/geek out with everyone). More details here. We’d love to see ya! A little while ago we took a road trip up to Northern Virginia to crash an awesome house that we thought you guys would love. It’s in a charming town called Herndon, and Michele and Nate poured some serious love (in the form of some serious work, time, and sweat) into their home. So let’s get our with the tour on, shall we?

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How To Match New Paint To An Old Paint Job

Let’s talk about the buffet again. Remember the one that we got for a steal off craigslist and parked in our entryway? Here he is now to jog your memory (sidenote: I think everyone should always pronounce jog as yog and jogging as yogging – it’s infinitely funnier). Dude was gorgeous, but he had a few little bumps and bruises that I wanted to heal. I wanted to play nurse with the buffet, ok? So file this under super speedy quick fixes – heck the whole thing only took about half an hour and ran me under $3. As for my materials list, here it is: Yup, all it took was a small craft brush

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25 Tips For Buying And Selling On Craigslist

After a bunch of you requested a post about this, we’re finally writing a loooong rundown about how we use Craiglist to score affordable secondhand finds as well as to sell things we no longer need. Sherry scratched the surface with a few tips on buying back in this post, but we wanted to share more info that was specific to interacting with sellers/buyers and writing up your listings, so here it goes. Craigslist can definitely be intimidating for first-timers. It doesn’t boast the glossy interface that makes using sites like Facebook feel so welcoming. Plus, some few-and-far-between but no-less scary crime stories are enough to make anyone wary of it. Even Sherry and I

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Homemade Jesse & Slinky Dog Costumes From Toy Story

Dude, I did it! I semi-DIYed my very first Halloween costumes, and I lived to tell the tale. It actually wasn’t too hard (do you believe that I didn’t sew a single thing?). Holla! In case it’s not super obvious, Clara asked to go as Jessie (the cowgirl from Toy Story) and Burger gets to be Slinky Dog (also from Toy Story). Here were most of my supplies for Clara’s costume: a “cowgirl hat” from a local pop-up Halloween store red yarn and white duct tape from AC Moore flared jeans from Old Navy (you know I used a coupon and bought them on discount Tuesdays) The first thing I tackled was making a long

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Framing Keepsakes In Shadow Boxes

Maybe we should rename our site Young Shadowbox Love. They’re just my jam. I’ve stuffed them with everything from calendars with special dates circled… … to keys from all of our past homes… … to wedding paraphernalia. I think it just goes back to loving the idea of displaying things that make for happy memories instead of tucking them into a closet in a box that never gets opened. So pretty much from the second we started writing our book over three years ago I had my eye out for things that I could save and stick in a box to forever commemorate this crazy journey that we never could’ve guessed we’d ever be on.

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How To Make A Big Magnetic Chalkboard

It’s Tuesday the 30th… so it’s time to share this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge project (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). Huzzah! This time John and I tried our hand at making a large chunky-framed leaning mirror – except instead of it actually being a mirror we made it into a giant chalkboard (since chalkboard paint is probably the most Pinterest-tastic material out there, haha). By designing it like a large leaning mirror, it can move from room to room, and it can be a place where we write sweet notes, make lists, and enjoy Clara-scribble (we secured it to

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How To Organize Tools With A Pegboard

Quick note: For now we just have lots of rain and a few wind gusts thanks to Hurricane Sandy, but things are supposed to get a bit rougher later today and tomorrow so we expect to be without power for a while (although we’ll post remotely whenever we can). We hope everyone else is staying safe and dry! Since pegboards are my new favorite thing, you knew I was bound to write another basement organization post that mentions them (along with some other methods to contain/control things like screws and nails) right? Here’s how I brought some sexy back to the basement (which I recently started to clean up after a yard sale, a bagster

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