My Love for YHL

A while back I posted Domino’s Top 26 Design Blogs, needless to say each week I have quite a bit of glorious design reading material in my inbox.  One of my favorite blogs wasn’t included in this list by Domino, it was included shortly thereafter in their Top 17 DIY BlogsYoung House Love is not only my favorite blog but they have a fantastic book and a home line at Target.  I look forward each week to find out what project this family is working on.  I swear they never sit down.

So the last post that I saw was for curtains in their master bedroom and contemplating what curtains they might want in their home office (both are rooms that I love).  Reading the post inspired me to re-take the home tour of their current house and refresh my design hungry mind of all the rooms that I just love.  They also worked with Habitat for Humanity on a Showhouse for the Homearama fundraiser.  This house is everything my dream home would/could/should be.

So after drooling for a little bit this morning glazing at the lovely, happy, family friendly interiors that is Young House Love, I decided to collect all my favorite rooms and share them.  And hopefully you will love them just as much.

 

bright powder room, painted existing sink cabinet and new mirror.

before living room (most of the rooms in their house were in this kind of shape, outdated colors, lots of dark wood, I just had to include a photo of what they had started with)

after living room. painted brick, exposed ceiling beams, neutral soft gray, fun pillows and accessories.

home office. I love how clean and bright it is. It so wonderful that there’s a desk for their daughter to do projects too.

master bedroom. I love this color gray! I love the gallery wall and the bright pop of yellow and aqua and the clean white bedding and curtains.

little girls room. I love the painted door and the pretty contrasting blues and pink. Such a happy room.

little boy nursery. This green is such a great boy color.

another shot of the nursery. This is the inspiration to recover our IKEA shelves (that house all the boys toys and book) to help tie into all the dark wood furniture in our living room.

guest room. This room is so cheery and gorgeous. Someday when we have an extra room that I could make a home office/guest room, I would like to pull these colors in. Just a touch of feminine in my all boy world.

Ok, now onto the showhouse.  Because this was a ground up project there wasn’t any “let’s work with what we got” projects.  Everything is brand new and built to order.  I am always attracted to blues and grays when it comes to interiors which is probably why I’m obsessed with this house.  And to top things off, each room has a fun pop of pink or yellow or green and the crispest white.

Exterior. I love the dark blue with the bright white trim and the timber and stone details.

front porch. I love the little seating area, the light fixture, white and blue with pops of red.

living room. Ahh! Colors, comfy seating, minimal but still fun accessories. I’m dying.

another view of this gorgeous haven.

kitchen. I would never have put this combo together but I love it. The light fixtures are fantastic, the bar stools are so awesome and not so tall that you can’t showcase the kitchen still.

another view to show how pretty the marble is with the backsplash and the gray cabinet. again with a pop of aqua.

adjacent breakfast nook off the kitchen. I love the built-ins and the custom giant table, so great for family dinners with lots of food on the table.

nook

powder room. I just love this tile. Amazing.

butler pantry between kitchen and dining room. chalkboard paint with local chalk artist work. I also love the idea of having friends doodle on the wall during a party or event.

dining room. I love the dark paint with the wainscoting (and that chevron pattern in the wood is fantastic!). I really love how the room feels very masculine but the art and curtains brings it back into the feminine realm. And of course, the running theme in all the rooms is beautiful light fixtures.

home office. I love these colors, light fixture, simple clean desk, geometric shapes. I want to work/play here.

 

master bedroom. Although I do love this room and all the colors for myself, I think if Ryan and I lived here we would definitely steer towards YHL’s current master bedroom. I do love these dressers and nightstands to pieces.

master bath. I love all the tile in this room! I love the sink cabinets and driftwood mirrors and light fixtures. Hands down I will steal that tile someday!

laundry room. Why not make a room that you have to use beautiful like the rest of your house? I love the wallpaper and the light fixtures. They add interest to a usually drab space.

guest bath. I just thought this was really lovely and clean. I’m seeing a running theme in the Showhouse. All bathrooms are clean, simple rooms. Elegant tile, sophisticated fixtures and sink cabinets. Other than the white and gray with a dab of light blue, these rooms do not include the loud pops of color as seen in the rest of the house. I really like that.

playroom. I love the colors and built-ins and sliding doors with glazing in them (so when they are closed the light from the window will still fill the hallway).

girl’s bedroom. This room is so outrageous to me. I love the carpet (as seen in the boy’s room below), I love the bright pink bed and yellow patterned wall, and I’m strangely attracted to the chicken artwork.

boy’s bedroom. This room is made for my little explorer’s in mind. I love that the bed, drawers, shelves, and reading bunk and all built-in so the floor is completely open of activities. I don’t know if I would ever get Cash out of the bunk.

another view of the boy’s room. I need this carpet!

outside dining deck. It’s simple, it’s covered, and in nice weather those doors would be open all day long.

outside patio. I imagine sitting around the fireplace during parties after a long day of barbequing and watching the sun go down. This only thing this area is missing is a nice pool with a simple water feature. Then I would be torn between wanting to hang out inside or outside all the time.

floor plan. I was so excited that they included a floor plan on their site. It helps me do a mental walk through.

I think I’ve posted enough of my favorite things from their site.  There’s so much more to see, swing by and take a gander for yourself.  They have two other home tours of their previous houses and what they did to them and so many DIY how-to’s just in case you see something you like.

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Jewelry Bar Inspiration

It’s been a I have yet to finish my exciting new jewelry storage.  I currently using my grandmothers’ old jewelry box which my grandfather had brought back from overseas for her.  I love it but with the size of some of my jewelry, it can be hard to close.

So I started looking around the web to find inspiration for an easier way to access my jewelry.  There’s a lot of stuff that I’m not fitting into the rotation because I’ve completely forgotten about it.

I’ve seen a lot of this on the web but was a afraid some of my necklaces might be too hefty.

This is so pretty but my small children would be able to get into it and I’m afraid my necklaces would get coiled up and knotted, which is a current problem.

I like this one from Etsy but I didn’t want to take up too much wall space and I have a lot more necklaces than this (it’s a borderline problem)

I love the look of this one that she built into an IKEA PAX wardrobe.  My current jewelry box is right on the sink vanity outside of our bathroom, where I also do my hair and makeup.  I love the gray with the gold on the mirror and look at how many necklaces she has on one rack, that’s what I’m talking about!  The thing I didn’t like was thinking about pre-drilling and screwing in all of those hooks.  At this point, I know I’m on the right track but I need a little more tweaking to get there.

This is a little closer to what I was thinking.  I’m going to keep my earrings in my jewelry box still but I want a double row of bars to hang all my necklaces and bangles from.

All I needed was a 1×2, a wooden dowel, and some hooks to screw into the 1×2 to hold the dowel.  Cut to size to fit on the wall space that I have in my vanity nook, paint and add a little hardware.

I found these at target.

I’ll post the tutorial as soon as I find a little bit of time.  Very excited for some jewelry organization!

A New Adult Bedroom

We had bought all our furniture before we had kids, so in our old house I felt like we were able to keep it slightly adult looking even with a baby swing in the middle of the living room.  We moved right before baby #2 arrived and set everything up to be child friendly for our toddler and new baby, including disassembling our dining room table and storing it along with the extra chairs.  Now where a dining room table would be is an explosion of children’s toys that my husband and I try to clean up each night to pretend for an hour or two that we live in a tidy house.  Our original living room furniture doesn’t quite mesh with the toy storage system that we have implemented with shelving from my toddler’s bedroom.  More on that later.

Slowly and surely, the toy invasion has moved upstairs into our bedroom and bathroom.  I’ve tripped on several toy cars or stuffed animals in the middle of the night, so I have implemented a cheap system of throwing toys in an empty diaper box at the end of our bed.  We have recently started the task of Spring Cleaning the house from top to bottom.  This has given me a surge of newness and a drive to make our bedroom an adult oasis.

I started toying with different color schemes.  How do I want to feel when I’m in our room?

Option #1

Option #1

In the first option I use bright colors that reflect our personalities.  Warm, fun, very outgoing.  I love it, my only problem is that it feel very kid friendly to me.

Option #2

Option #2

In this option I wanted to use a warm green to go with the wood color of our existing furniture.  I do not want to replace our existing bed, nightstands and dresser, so those will remain the same in each option.  I do want to add a garage sale/ flea market desk and paint it a complimentary color to the scheme.  I typically don’t use green with my house decor but it looks like lovely with the wood and I am trying to create something different from the rest of the house.

Option #3

Option #3

For Option #3, I asked my husband which color he would want me to make a scheme around.  He asked for gray-blue.  Definitely one of my favorite colors.  So mellow, contrasts nicely with our wood color and feels very adult-like but can have some fun accessories.  I also went a little crazy with Rhino’s in the decor, it’s kind of a family mascot.  Ultimately, I would love to get a print of Andy Warhol’s Rhino and have it in our living room. (Again, more on that later.)

Option #4

Option #4

And finally, the most adult and chic and glamorous scheme I could come up with.  Since we’re currently renting our house I wanted to avoid painting the walls.  I’ve been seeing lots of white and black bedrooms that I just thought were the cats pajamas.  See below.

blackandwhite

This was hands down my favorite.  To mimic the old photographs I found some images of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash to put in some ornate gold frames (we are big Johnny Cash fans, even named our first son after him).  I wanted everything black and white/cream and gold.  Very simple and clean and no kiddish colors found in the rest of our house.

I also plan on making a simple built in closet, similar to this:

how a girl built her closet

So let me know what you think of my bedroom options!  Or give me suggestions for more adult themed schemes!