Husband - it's your 32nd birthday and I am so thankful to be the one by your side celebrating it! Thank you for choosing me 4 years ago as we walk through life together. Everything we've celebrated and endured are things I'm beyond grateful to have you holding my hand through. You're my rock and best friend and I still wake up so in love with you, thankful for the encouragement, support and laughter you bring to my life daily! You have my whole heart, let's stay young and in love forever, okay? Actually, scratch that…I like growing old with you! Let’s do that instead.

 
So I take literally NO credit for this recipe.  This is 100% a creation of my husband whom NEVER cooks!  But hey, if you have to start somewhere a Crock-pot is probably a good place to start right?  He actually invented this a couple months ago when I had a sick day and it actually turned out really good!  Win for the hubby!  The ingredients are simple and there's nothing to turning the Crock-pot on LOW for 6-8 hours and letting it do all the work.

For as long as I can remember I've always had a Queen sized bed but when David and I moved into our new house we splurged on a King bed...while I love all the space in the bed I did miss having a headboard, for some reason it didn't feel like a "bedroom" to me without it.  Though I've done quite a bit of online research I just couldn't find anything that I liked that didn't fall into the $500+ price range and that my friends I'm just not going to do.

Then came Pintrest! Tons of posts from people all over creating their own DIY Headboards for a fraction of the cost of buying it online...immediately I knew I had to give it a shot, all I had to do was convince my amazing husband to help me, which of course because he's amazing he agreed to do!

First step was going to Lowe's, my total cost was around $30 and for that we got:

1.  1/2 inch Sheathing which the associates cut to 72" W x 42" H - $18.37
2.  Flat Picture Hanging Kit - $7.96

After Lowe's we went to JoAnn's Fabric, total cost that I spent here was larger but that was to be expected $74.37 which included:

1.  4 yards of fabric which was 50% off, original cost was $16.99/yard but I got it for $8.49/yard (by the way 4 yards was WAY TOO MUCH! I could have gotten away with 3 yards) - $33.96
2.  1 can of spray on adhesive to keep the foam on the plywood - $10.99
3.  2 rolls of foam (2 1/2 yards per roll) - $13.73/roll
4.  1 roll of batting for a Twin Bed - $10.99

Okay, so we've got everything right? Right! Now how to do this with 2 kids running around? Then enters my saving grace, my Mother-In-Law, she lives right around the corner and she offered to watch the girls while David and I got the headboard done, so we dropped the girls off, came back home and got to work!!

1. Set the Plywood (Sheathing) on sawhorses

3.  Place your batting over the foam, start from whichever edge you like use a staple gun to attach it to the plywood.  Batting will help keep your foam in place and provide a buffer between the foam and your fabric.

4.  Now onto your fabric...we chose a dark brown with some raised stitching on it that creates multiple diamond patterns, we were doing to do a plain fabric with tufted buttons but a texture seemed a little easier for our first try at this kind of project.  Lay your fabric on top of the batting and again use your staple gun to secure it to plywood.  We started with the bottom part of the headboard first then were able to keep the fabric tight while we stapled the top and sides.


5.  We are heading into the home stretch now!  It's time to attach your hanging method, we chose a flat panel instead of hooks but that was just what we chose to do.  David helped me attach this to the back of the plywood and also into the wall using toggle bolts.  I will mention here that when we went to hang this we needed the extra piece of plywood from when it got cut at Lowe's because of the foam on the back the panels wouldn't fit properly so we had to add the additional plywood then re-attach the hanging piece so it had enough room to stick out and snap together.


6.  Now it's time to take your beautiful creation inside and hang it up on the wall! Here my friends is the final product! Love it!  Looks great and I'm happy with it for being my first real DIY kind of thing.  What do you think??


YAY! All done! I really do think it helped the room feel more pulled together.  Because the stick on saying "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" was kind of crooked so we hung these little brown boxes I had above the headboard to make it look more even.

Extending a HUGE thank you to my hubby for all his help, I couldn't have done it without him and I really do like it!  Hope this helped any of you who would like to do something like this.  Next time I might attempt a tufted headboard (maybe for the girls rooms) but like I said this is a great job for a 1st attempt!

My next DIY project will be taking my husband's grandmothers antique mirror from brass and spray painting it white and roughing it up a little to give a vintage look to hang on our turquoise wall in our kitchen, so stay tuned for that!