Headboard Reveal!

It's finally time for the big reveal and I am so excited because I love love love the way it came out!
Here's what you need if you want to try this for yourself:

-1/2 inch piece plywood --> cut to the width of your bed and your desired height
-batting
-foam (I used 1/2 inch)
-staple gun
-adhesive spray
-nailhead trim --> can be found on ebay
-rubber mallet or a hammer with some sort of fabric covering it so you don't dent the trim
-and, of course, fabric of your choice

First things first, I went to Home Depot to get my plywood cut and Joann Fabrics to get my fabric, foam, batting and adhesive spray.  Although there was a sign for Nailhead Trim on the shelf at Joann's, it was sold out and no one had a clue when it would be back in stock, so I had to order from ebay.

I ironed my fabric and layed it face down across the floor.  I put the batting on top of that and than sprayed the batting with Adhesive Spray and laid the 1/2 inch piece of foam on top to keep it all in place.

I then placed my piece of plywood on top of the 3 layers..

You may need to cut your foam as I did in the above picture so your edges are cleaner.

 That's me hard at work :)

Make sure you pull the fabric and batting tight enough so it stays in place but not too tight that it creates bumps along the edges of your headboard.

Ta-da!  Now onto the Nailhead Trim...

With most Nailhead Trim's you only have to nail in every 5th nail; convenient right?  Lucky me purchased this from ebay where it was misadvertised and I had to bang in every other nail.  Not the end of the world, just a bit more time consuming and more difficult to keep a straight line.  You can always use regular nailheads but this will take double the time.

See how they fit in like so?  Very simple.  Don't get down on yourself if you break a few nails though; I had a large pile of bent and broken nails along with a not so nice looking thumb when I decided to hammer my thumb instead of a nail by accident.. me and hammers, we don't really mix too well!

There you have it!  It's not perfect, but I think that's why I love it so much.  It has character.  Not to mention since our bed is against a window it very easily gets hot and cold based on the outdoor temperature.  With our new headboard it is so much more comfortable! 

That's not all for today though.  I couldn't resist quickly sewing together 2 more throw pillows and grabbing a fun pillow from our guestroom to spice up the big reveal:

The blue fabric I bought on sale at fabric.com for $15 per yard, it's Dwell Studio and can be found here.  You guessed right, that's $15 for two pillows!  Beat that deal!

And when I say I quickly sewed these pillows I mean ordered fabric, which was delivered within a couple of days, pulled apart two old throw pillows, used their filler and sewed these bad boys within 30 minutes! 

Those curtains you ask?  Well, you didn't ask but I will share with you anyway :)  They are made out of $8 painters dropcloth.. that's right.. and they are actually "no-sew" curtains because at the time I had no clue how to use a sewing machine!  I'll write a post about them one of these days..

PS-If anyone is interested, I will be opening my own Etsy shop where I will be selling these headboards.  Feel free to send me an email at rebpino@gmail.com if you are interested in buying a custom headboard.  You can use any print or solid fabric you wish, I will help you design it :)

Mudroom Overhaul

There are a lot of projects going on in our house these days.  Our new headboard looks awesome, which I will be sharing with you all on Wednesday.  We completely ripped apart our mudroom this weekend, discussed/browsed Home Depot for new flooring for the house, talked about re-decorating our living room, the list goes on!  Instead of getting overwhelmed I decided to take it as it comes, because nothing ever goes as planned.. not in our house at least!

The first project I decided we would tackle is our mudroom.  Being the smallest and most unfinished room in the house, I figured it would be the quickest and easiest considering it was basically a clean slate.  Here is what we started with:

This is the entrance to the mudroom.  The door has frosted "plass". I say "plass" because it's definitely not glass, it's more like plastic, so plass works for me!  But it hides the room well, especially considering that the room has terrible insulation so in the summer it gets ridiculously hot and in the winter it is freezing!  And yes, that is a seriously old school door bell on the top left wall, which makes an awful sound so we unplugged it.  I'm scared to take it down but it will happen soon.  And the hole in the wall on the bottom left you ask?  We will touch on that shortly...

Oh yea, a straight shot to our neighbors backyard :)

We've got shelves down the wall on the left, a hot water heater on the right, and a great side door.  It would be a great room if it weren't so messy and dirty, and oh that hot water heater is such an eye sore.  So I got approval to move forward with an overhaul of this unfinished space.  What I did not realize was just how unfinished it actually was...

 When we took down the 4 shelves (which each had 3 brackets with 3 screws in each, totalling 36 screws!) the wall came off with them.  Yup, that right there is drywall.. awesome.

 Oh ya know just another hole in the wall!  The previous owners must have had cats and the litter box must have resided in the handy little mudroom.  Cats scare me, therefore these holes must go, they are totally creepy.  You will also notice how the wall and floor don't quite meet.  Next picture...

YES just what I always wanted! A completely uneven, sloping floor!  Along with some unfinished cement trim.  Woohoo! Oh and the floor, literally peeled up in a second.  I wish I took a picture of that but I was too busy laughing at what I had gotten myself into.  Underneath is just an uneven cement surface. 

There is a lot of work to do, but I am very determined!  With a Home Depot trip, some supplies we already own, and of course help from my handsome live in handy man, we are going to make this room absolutely glorious!  Here is a inspiration board I made before knowing what I was getting into:

 I'm going to paint the walls with neutral tone on tone stripes.  I for some reason thought the walls were white so this was going to be super easy.  Too bad they're baby blue; therefore I will be starting from scratch.  I will be keeping the lowest shelf and the highest shelf.  The lowest shelf will be a bench with a cushion that I, of course, will be making, as well as a fun pillow for a pop of color.  The high shelf will be for storage which will be neatly placed in baskets. (I hope!)  I will be making a curtain to hang over the window as well as another long curtain to hide the hot water heater.  I actually went on a hunt for fabric this weekend in Philadelphia with a good friend of mine.  I happened to stumble across the fabric that I have featured in my inspiration board above; sadly it was $65 per yard.. PER YARD! Are people insane!? I then stumbled upon the below fabric which was perfect:

It's by Braemore Fabrics and is called Joy in the color Pearl; which looks Grey here but is actually more of a Taupe color.  I'm so excited to get sewing while my "handy man" levels out the floor and fixes the walls!  Then on to painting stripes.

I hope everyone had as great and productive a weekend as I did!

Headboard Inspiration

I love nailhead trim.. on pretty much anything. I think it brings in a fun yet sophisticated feel to a room; especially a bedroom. Our bedroom is quite small so I'm trying to add little details that will liven it up without closing it in and a headboard seems like a great addition! Here are a few inspiring bedrooms:

 

elledecor.com



elledecor.com
This is Sarah Jessica Parker's summer home!I love the breezy, open feeling, isn't is great?!





lonnymag.com



 So, on a search I went for the most perfect headboard!



Restoration Hardware $1190 on sale for $950 (cringe!)

  

West Elm $449



Pottery Barn $1099 (yikes!)



So, on that note, I will be doing this one myself!  It can't be that hard, honestly.. and the BF decided he wanted input on this one so he chose a midnight blue faux suede as the fabric..nervous? maybe a touch!  stay tuned............

Sweet Return

I know, it's been a while, almost 3 whole months to be exact.  BUT I am back.. life got hectic and overwhelming, so I've decided I will be writing on Mondays and Wednesdays only. (For now)

I may have disappeared on you but boy have I been busy!  I have a quite a few projects to share with you all!  Today I will share the wonderful cupcakes I made this past weekend, compliments of Martha of course!  It was my sister's birthday as well as father's day so of course I used it as an excuse to try these mouth watering Strawberry Cupcakes!  They were surprisingly really easy!

Cake Ingredients:
-2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 cup cake flour (not self-rising)**See below!
-1 tablespoon baking powder
-1 teaspoon salt
-8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
-2 1/4 cup sugar
-3 large eggs
-1 large egg white
-1 cup whole milk
-1 1/2 teaspoons pur vanilla extract
-2 cups finely chopped strawberries (I left these out to make the cupcake a bit more simple)

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting Ingredients:
-4 large egg whites
-1 1/4 cups sugar
-3/4 pound unsalted butter, softened, cut into small pieces (3 sticks)
-1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries pureed

I must admit, however, they did not come out perfect because I made a few mistakes.  I knew the minute I put the cupcakes in the oven something wasn't right.  Well, for one I just realized writing this recipe for you that I totally missed the 1 egg white ingredient (whoops!).  The evil cake flour is what had me baffled.  I had never heard of it, never used it, went to the store and couldn't find it!  So instead of being smart and googling what the heck it was, I figured I would just use all-purpose flour in it's place.  Which wasn't the end of the world, until I realized I used way too much of it! It looked like I was making muffins rather than cupcakes!  After I put them in the oven I turned to google and learned there is such a thing as cake flour.  It's usually at the top shelf in the food store above the all-purpose flour.  If you cannot find cake flour you can always use less all-purpose flour and a teaspoon of cornstarch.  (I didn't try this obviously, but next time I will).  I contemplated a re-do but decided to move on to the strawberry buttercream icing, because, well, if the icing tastes good who cares if there's a vanilla muffin underneath!

Unfortunately, I made mistakes here too :(  That softened butter.. yea, it was ice cold and hard.  So I used logic, or so I thought!, and microwaved it for 30 seconds so it was soft.  I found out later, when I resorted to google yet again after making runny strawberry buttercream icing, that you are NOT to microwave the butter.  You really just need to let it sit.  Strike 3!  I let it sit in the fridge and crossed my fingers for thicker icing in a few hours. 

When all was said and done, the cupcakes weren't terrible, they were actually quite tasty!  The actual cupcake tasted like a pound cake rather than a white crumbly cake I was going for, but it happens!  At least they looked really pretty!

Lessons learned, I will definitely be trying this one again soon!