Stick a Pin in It......

One of my favorite things about Pinterest is that it 

gets my brain excited.

This is so true for me that I have a Pinterest curfew.

Otherwise, I lay awake all night thinking about 

the Pinterest-y things I want to try.

There was one such night that I laid in bed all night

thinking about a map.

Yeah....a map.

Because since we live in Europe now, we want to go places.

And we want to document our travels in a unique way.

Doesn't everyone?

Of course they do.

So anyway, I had been searching Pinterest for such a thing.

A family travels map.

Oh, be still my beating heart.

I can't say that any one was exactly what I wanted,

but I had a few choice examples to guide me.

Like this

Or This

Or This. Oooolala.

At this point, I needed to execute my plan.

Now I do love power tools, and I have done some moderately 

impressive builds.

However, I'm not so much for cutting angles.

Straight cuts, yes.

Angled cuts, someone (me) might lose a finger.

You see what I'm getting at?

Since I don't think my hubby would dig giving me a celebratory high 3, I asked for his help.

He, as always, rolled his eyes and got to work.

Voila!

Hubs built and I painted the frame and did the stenciling.

We got the map from here, where the selection is huge.

This is just 1x3 boards cut so that the map sits tightly inside the frame.

For the lettering I printed the words and traced them onto

the frame and painted them in.

I noticed after we hung it, that the Ns are upside down.

Don't tell anyone.

I wrapped washi tape around the tops of straight pins and cut the tape to 

look like little flags.

Then we stuck pins in all the places we've traveled, and all the

places we've lived.

Ya'll we stuck a lot of pins in this bad boy.

Now that it's done, I can't wait to stick another pin in it!