We interrupt this regularly scheduled update for a quick patio progress report: the expensive patio supplies mentioned earlier have arrived. Now we understand why they cost so much. The shipment was larger than our car, a giant truck delivered it, the total weight on the delivery ticket reads over 19,000 pounds, and the materials have … Read more

Q: Since I’m an avid reader/adorer of all things YHL, I’ve seen pretty much all the pictures of your home that you’ve managed to cram into the blog. And every time I see these pics, I swoon over how organized and neat your house is—so very unlike my own. One thing in particular annoys me: … Read more

Work continues on our big opening between the kitchen and the dining room. I still forget the doorway exists until I walk in the room in the morning, feel the sun on my face and burst into song and dance. Seriously — it feels like a little Disney moment here. While we finish door jambs, … Read more

As many of you know, each month we like to pick up an inexpensive — sometimes free — bouquet or plant to keep things feeling fresh around the house. The idea originally came from a thoughtful Christmas present from my husband. This month I diverged from our usual plan when I found an adorable little … Read more

January felt like one of those blink-and-it’s-over months for us — it flew by. Before our behind-the-scenes book work erases the details, we like to pause and recap what we accomplished, gather links in one place, and share a few unseen moments. This month was a whirlwind, with a big focus on the kitchen, a … Read more

Chairs are one of those decor items where we mix high and low finds. On the budget side we have our $30 thrift store egg chair… …our $32 stools from a school-supply site… …and our $35 secondhand office chairs, just to name a few. On the higher end (though still reasonable to many) we’ve invested … Read more

After more than a year and a half of renovations, the duplex finally hosted its first overnight guests. It was an emotional, exciting, and eye-opening test of all the work we’ve done, so we’re sharing what we learned and what we’re changing before it hosts again. We also talk about a house we considered buying … Read more

Right around the time we announced our pregnancy, several friends and family members shared that they were expecting too. People joked that there must be something in the water. After that joke repeated itself, I started wondering: what actually is in our tap water? I happened to catch the end of a Dr. Oz segment … Read more

Giving an old thrifted piece of furniture a fresh update is one of our favorite kinds of makeovers. Tanis’s china cabinet project is a perfect example—elegant, thoughtful, and beautifully executed. Here’s a look at the transformation she and her husband completed: A friend introduced me to this blog and I’ve been hooked ever since. My … Read more

We’re still in Richmond for now (but not for much longer!), and we wanted to wait until we were there in person to publish a full progress post about the exterior of our Florida house so we could take lots of progress photos. That detailed exterior update is coming next week — by then we … Read more