World Map

As a longtime subscriber to National geographic, I have aquired quite a few maps over the years, but this particular map has always been my favorite. After Nathaniel and I traveled around the world, I toyed with the idea of framing it, but whenever I looked into how much it would cost to have it down professionally, I changed my mind. A couple of months ago, I was nursing Claire, and I came up with the idea of getting my hubby to make me a frame from crown moulding. I picked up a couple packages of cork board from the dollar store and glued it to the inside of the frame so that there would be something to tack the map to. In hindsight, I would not have used something other than cardboard as the backing, but we didn't have anything else lightweight enough on hand, and didn't feel like waiting until our next trip into town to finish the project. Consequently, when we glued the cork board to the cardboard it warped a bit. Nonetheless, Nathaniel was able to screw it to the wall and I am happy with the finished product.

I used push pins from staples to document all the countries and main cities that he and I have visited.

Red = Places I have traveled on my own
Blue = Places that Nathaniel has been on his own
Black + Yellow = Places we have traveled together

In the future I plan to place white pins on the countries I REALLY want to visit in the near future. At the moment, my wish list includes Italy, Morocco, Greece, New York and France.

A few close-ups:

Central America



Southeast Asia



Europe:



Just to give you an idea of how big it is: