Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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3 Fun Pumpkin Projects To Do With Young Kids

Since Clara’s still a few years off from knife-wielding age, we still scratch our heads each year for a toddler-friendly way for her to be involved in the pumpkin decorating process. When she was 5 months old we borrowed the outline of her hand to inspire a lady-like Jack-o-Lantern (a Jill-o-Lantern perhaps?) Last year we took advantage of her new-found dexterity and let her finger paint some pumpkins that we had strategically taped off ahead of time to later reveal some designs. And since she had so much fun last year (and we loved how they turned out) we did a slight twist on that idea by making tissue paper “sticker” pumpkins this year. Anyone

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My Date With Nate

A bunch of you have been asking what I got from Tar-jay for Nate’s big weekend debut, and since I’m a die-hard fan (remember when our hands almost touched here?) of course I was the first girl at the store on Sunday morning right as they opened. Yup, even though we just got back from Cincinnati the night before, I’m a Noupie (Nate Groupie) so you can bet my buns were there, and they were excited. Then I went in. Womp-womp, no Nate stuff out. And when I asked where it was, the two sweet Target girls were all “Nate who?” Instead of extolling the virtues of Nate, which I totally would have done if

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How To Prep Your Lawn For Grass Seed

It’s like I have my own personal Alseed. Yes, that’s a True Blood reference. I totally called John “Alseed” the entire time that he seeded our freshly leveled and ready-for-grass backyard. Why? Because I’m corny like that. He rolled his eyes but secretly I think he liked it. What dude is going to complain about being likened to this guy? Although I tend to like my men tall, dork, and handsome. Which is why John = even better than Alcide for me (yes that’s the correct way to spell his name, I just went with Alseed for the pun). But back to the freshly cleared backyard (you can read about all the phases that led

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Nerding It Up In The Nasty ‘Nati

Sorry to take so long writing this post for you guys! We know lots of you were asking about it ever since we got back this weekend, but in true Petersik fashion we took way too many pics and had to figure out which ones to use and then felt like over-sharing about the whole thing… and thus this giant full-o-pics-and-words post was born. Anyway, the first tour stop for our book in Cincinnati this weekend was, well, kind of nuts. But the good kind of nuts. The kind where it’s like a whirlwind of awesome and can’t-believe-this-is-happening experiences all jammed packed into about 36 hours. We promise we won’t pour over the details of

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Painting A Thrift Store Wood Duck

We’re excited to share our Cincy adventures (we laughed! I cried! we got something confiscated at the airport!) and we’ve already started our Pinterest challenge project along with having a pretty cool before & after that’s almost done (just have to take pics and write that post for ya) so there’s lots going on in our casa – both duck related and beyond! I say duck related because, well… I snagged this odd little wooden duck for $4 at a thrift store here in Richmond (Diversity Thrift). The date? Oh, about a year ago. Yes dudes, I’m about to get on something after twelve solid months of the “thinking about getting on that” stage (you

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There’s something in the air…

Nope, not a crisp fall chill. Not falling leaves. Not the smell of apple pie and pumpkin spice. Ok, so maybe those are in the air too, but you know what else is floating around? A certain challenge, that’s what. So who’s with us? Here’s how to play along. Just pin some inspiration and do your own spin. Yup, this highly embarrassing collection of our old Halloween photos can only mean one thing: we were into odd things as children it’s high time for a fall Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie Bower to make us stop pinning and start doing). I’m laughing the most at my wolf

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Fab Freebie: She’s Not Jenny From The Block

*** This giveaway is now closed –  see who won below!*** It was fun hearing all of your rap names, guys. That and seeing how many people entered “C.LO” instead of “L.CO.” That does roll of the tongue a bit more easily… Anyways, our random winner is… Rebecca (or should we say “Rebizzle” since that’s her high school nickname, which has stuck around for 15 years). Congrats! When Sherry and I were looking for some big, bold paintings to add some oomph to a few book photos back in January we turned to a local painter (and friend!) named Lindsay Cowles. And when she arrived at our house to loan us some gorgeous canvasses for

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How To Organize A Basement Workshop

Now that we’ve cleared out our backyard’s weed & liriope convention, let’s move on to another area that has been sorely lacking our attention. Yes, let’s spend some time in our basement, shall we? Oh wait – that sounds like an invitation to get murdered or something. Um, let’s just talk about our basement. You may recall that it recently went from a shameful deck-debris-filled no man’s land… …to a slightly more presentable space thanks to our Bagster rental a few weeks ago. Well, that Bagster purge and our recent yard sale were the kick in the butt that I’ve needed to finally put some energy into this room. Because honestly, we’ve put ZERO effort

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A Full Bathroom Reno For Under $2000

It’s not often that a before photo actually makes me laugh out loud. But I did so I’ll cop to it right now. Just check out the shower tile in Erin’s main bathroom for yourself. Thankfully the incredible overhaul that she and her husband did means that old tile is nothing but a (somewhat hilarious) memory. Here’s her letter: Hi John & Sherry, we’ve been working on remodeling our foreclosure mess for just over a year now, and so far we’ve completed three bathroom remodels! I’m still doing a happy dance from how this last one turned out. This room started out as bad as it could get with dirty white tile & brown grout,

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Drilling Holes In Your Pumpkins For Spooky Wood Snakes

Just to be clear, that post title is meant to be said in a Dr. Dre-esque fashion like he does in this song (aw yeah, $herdog still rocks out to the clean version of this 1999 classic). And now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about something hardcore. Pumpkins, yo. This year we got lumpy bumpy orangy-red ones instead of the usual smooth yellow-orange guys just for kicks. The coolest thing about them is that they have stems on the bottom and top, which is kind of fun. Pretty much as soon as we got them home we got to work hollowing them out, and I directed John to make a

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Landscaping Updates In The Backyard

Update: Thanks so much for all the kind words and general awesomeness on yesterday’s post. You guys rock my socks. Ladies and gentlemen, we actually have a backyard. Well, we still need to get some grass going on, but three phases of digging and transplanting and weeding (here’s phase one, and here’s phase two) have definitely turned our Jumanji-esque backyard into a nice clearing for Burger & Clara to run around in… once that aforementioned grass makes itself at home. And we still have a ton of giant trees on the side and back of our lot to keep it from feeling too open and stark, which seems to be the sweet spot for us.

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Behind The Scenes Details Of Writing A Book

It’s Tuesday afternoon, which means it’s high time for some over-sharing (aw yeah, let’s talk about feelings, shall we?). The very first hot-off-the-presses copy of our book arrived via Fed Ex yesterday and it kind of melted my brain a little, I think. We couldn’t stop beaming at it and saying things like “It’s real! It has pages! It has a cover! It has our names on it!” – but I’d be lying if I said that “crazy-pants excited” was my only response to seeing it there on the floor looking all real and book-like. I’m also skeered. Really scared actually. And since I’ve spilled my guts about 14 months of breast feeding, owned up

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