Picturesque Home Magazine

With our kids’ summer break kicking off this weekend, we came up with a fun twist on our usual summer reading goals. We had the idea while playing “would you rather” on a family walk this morning, came home and whipped up a paper template, and an hour later Sherry mentioned it in passing on Instagram. Then Sherry’s DMs filled up with people asking her to share a copy of the bracket or tell them where we got it (we whipped it up in Photoshop), so we decided to drop two free printable options of it here in this post. I even had some fun myself, as a 41-year-old man, making this filled-out sample above (our kids put much wackier places on theirs ;) The idea is simple: have your kids test out different reading locations and have each spot face off in a head-to-head March Madness-style bracket. Continue reading Best Summer Reading Spot Bracket – Free Kids Printables at Young House Love.

For over a decade, one of our renovating mantras has been “the middle makes no sense.” Basically, don’t fret if your house is mid-reno, not fully furnished, or otherwise in limbo. Take your time, try something out, and just course correct as you go. See what you like and what you use. Live with something for a little while (or a long while). Take the expectation of having a finished perfect house right away and throw it in the trash (it always takes us years to get to that point!). Just keep letting spaces evolve in ways that work for your family and make you happy. And eventually, you’re very likely to end up with something you love and find extremely useful. This particular corner of our bedroom has been a perfect example of that mantra… especially because it got very weird there in the middle (wait for it). Continue reading Using Ikea Floating Shelves To Make Sense Of A Weird Corner In Our Bedroom at Young House Love.

When sharing some videos of our bathroom on Instagram recently, many of you noticed an easy update we added: a wooden, floating shelf in the window. It was such a simple DIY project that we did on a whim a while ago (and it was extremely affordable too!) so we wanted to show you the easy steps to make one yourself. For reference, this is what the window looked like when we first showed you the before and afters of this space back in 2020. We’ve always used the deep windowsill for some decor and greenery, but adding the extra shelf gave us room for more things, and just generally adds some nice interest to a formerly non-descript window. The steps for this depend somewhat on your specific window, but here’s what we used for ours: Tools & Materials Cove molding or quarter round A wooden board or, in our case, scrap butcher block Saw (we used a circular saw, but a miter saw or table saw could work also)* Hammer & nails (or nail gun) Measuring tape Level Pencil Paintable caulk Paint (to match your existing trim) *You could also get the board cut to size at Lowe’s or Home Depot, in which case you wouldn’t need a saw & could likely use a small hand saw or hack saw for the thin quarter round supports. Continue reading Adding A Floating Shelf To A Window at Young House Love.

Any time we mention having only one bathroom it spawns a flurry of interest in our Instagram DMs about how we manage that with our four-person family. Although we’re definitely not intrepid for having this setup in any way (so many families in the US & abroad live a wonderful life in a smaller home with one bathroom), and we also have an outdoor shower that we can use almost year-round (which definitely takes the pressure off of our single indoor bathroom), there’s a surprising amount of curiosity around the topic. So we’re here to break down why it has worked so well for our family and what we’ve done to make it extra efficient & easy to live with. Note: Details, sources, and before & after photos can be found in this bathroom tour post. I know some people will read this and think “I could NEVER live that way! Continue reading 4 People + 1 Bathroom: How & Why It Works For Us at Young House Love.