Oh, the Places We'll Go

Today is the day that I can finally share with you all a DIY project that has been in the works for a long time! As you all know, traveling is one of my life's goals - I want to see all 50 states and at least 6 continents before I die. If you know me, you also know that I love organization and visual ways to keep track of progress that I'm making. That's why I have a special calendar printed out where I keep track of my workouts, and why I have a day planner that I swear I live by. (I'd love to invest in an E.C. life planner but they're just out of my price range right now!) Well, today's DIY project brings my love of traveling and my love for organization together into one beautiful display :)

The best part about this project is once I had all of the materials, they were super easy to assemble to make the final product! I basically got these maps off of Amazon, trimmed them down to the size of the frame that I bought (as you can see I probably should have gotten a bigger frame for the US since I'm missing part of Cali and Maine...sorry to anyone who lives there!), added cork to the poster, and framed them both without the protective plastic in front. Obviously, the plastic would have kept the pins from being able to go into the map. The maps that I bought were laminated, which will help them stay nice over time!

Here are some close-ups of the parts of the maps that actually have pins:

Finally completing this project means I'm one task closer to finishing my 101 in 1001 goals! I just wish I had somewhere cool to hang them, but my apartment is running low on empty wall space at the moment. They're a little big, but I wanted to get pretty detailed maps and I'm sure they'll look great in our house some day :)