In Nina Huynh and Dejan Stanić’s eclectic New Westminster home, you’ll find pastel-painted doors, nostalgic neo-pop art (think childhood cereal mascots in Supreme hoodies) and an undeniable DIY spirit. It’s hard to believe they’ve only been here for three years—save for a brief L.A. detour—because the place feels like a long-established creative playground.
Huynh (@yourgirlneens) started building her online following with thrift hauls and candid day-in-the-life vlogs on YouTube before blowing past 100,000 subscribers. “She was internet famous when I met her,” Stanić says. Huynh’s channel (now with more than 180,000 fans) and Instagram (nearly 70K strong) help support the family—Huynh and Stanić have two little boys, Blu and Lucky. “I want this girl to chill,” jokes Stanić, acknowledging his wife’s ever-busy schedule. (“We were in Tokyo, then I had to head straight to Paris for Pharrell Williams’s Over the Moon Lego launch,” recalls Huynh. “I literally came home for two days for Lucky’s birthday before flying out again.”)
The couple’s home also doubles as a creative workshop. “We start a lot of projects and businesses,” says Huynh. “Whenever we have an idea, we just go for it, successful or not, it’s all a learning experience.” Case in point: the two of them launched a custom tissue box company called Chuck Me a few years back; today, Stanić is building his own fashion brand. “I’ve been really into sewing,” he says, referencing half-finished workwear pieces he hopes to release under the label DayOff (his Serbian name is pronounced “Day-On”). His own popular Instagram account, @dejansdayoff, tracks his fashion journey and their DIY projects: he’s painted skateboard decks and recently (as in, the day before this photo shoot) tried to sand down a once-blue dining table by hand. “I had no idea an electric sander was that cheap,” he laughs.
From the dumpster-rescued painting crowning the fireplace to a framed to-go bag from Nemesis Coffee, nearly every object decorating the cozy condo tells a story. Even a random CD from the couple’s first vlog together—chosen blindly at a Value Village in Seattle—earns a spot in a frame. “Art for us is less typical,” says Stanić. “It’s personal memories, found objects, that sort of thing.”
