Pack lightly

In the past 11 months, Casey and I have been all over the place.  I've described the 2010 trips during my year in review. In 2011, we went out to see Casey's best friend in Lubbock (and had one of the best weekends we've ever had).  A couple of months later, we headed to Dallas to visit my best friend and spend 4 hours (!) in Ikea.

One thing is for certain, we travel well together.  We both really enjoy checking out all of the sites the city has to offer, but we don't have a problem jumping in to a random neighborhood bar to grab a drink. The other day, a friend mentioned that we should start collecting postcards from each place we went.  I took it up a notch and created an ever-changing work of art!

First, I printed out a map of the US:

And I picked up some awesome cork board roll. It's something incredible like 1/28th of an inch. AND, it has a sticky back (which was a really nice surprise!).

I pinned the map to the cork roll and outlined the country.  It's important to note, the East Coast is SO MUCH HARDER to trace/cut out than the West Coast.  And don't even get me started on the Great Lakes.

 I was trying to figure out what to secure this to, so I went to Hobby Lobby to look. I originally wanted a block of wood, but the wood cuts were far too small to fit the map. So I walked around a bit. Low and behold, I found this...

A larger cork board! So then I took it home and painted it.

  Does the color look familiar? It should! It's the same color as my headboard!

After the paint dried, I carefully placed the map.  Unfortunately, the sticky stuff on the back of the cork roll was not strong enough to hold the map on. So I took out my hot glue gun (the master of all crafts/bane of my fingers' existence).

I put it up in the kitchen!