I just have to start off by saying what a difference a year makes. Compare my Anniversary photo to the photo of me in the “About Sarah” section of the side menu. The bathroom scale might not report much of a change, but I see a world of difference. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I have been wanting to do a family travel map for a while, so when our anniversary was coming up I thought it would be a fun project to do together. I loved the idea of working on a project together, that’s also practical in the sense that we’ll hang it up and love to look at it rather than something that gets stored away. (Like our wedding album. Sad, but true.) We wanted to combine the traditional first anniversary wedding gift, paper, with the modern anniversary gift, clocks, so we added a series of world clocks to the map.

I’m very happy with how this turned out. I ended up using just traditional rubber cement to mount the map onto a foam core backing. Most people recommend spray adhesive for an even spread, but I had so much rubber cement left over from a wedding project that I wanted to use up. Rubber cement worked fine for this project because the map was on thick matte photo paper: no wrinkling or bulging. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough.

The frame came from Walmart (about $18 + tax). I could have gone a little cheaper, but I liked the look of the frame, and the dark mahogany brown color. It matched the map perfectly. The frame had a plastic shield over (ie fake glass) but it was fairly easy to rip out and make room for the pins. Once I pulled out the plastic, I realized how flimsy the frame was. The foam board backing is necessary to help it keep it’s shape, as well as provide a place for the pins to go.

We used medium black tacks (purchased on amazon since they were cheaper when you factored in shipping – $9). The tacks have a tendency to disappear when you stand a few feet back because the map is so dark. We decided to pin places we had been to together, including before we were married or even engaged. Other options include having pins of different colors for each family member, or pins for with kids and sans kids.

The wall clocks are of important locations to us. We met, married and honeymooned in three different time zones which happen to move West to East. The progression works very well with the concept of world clocks. The time is set to the time of our ceremony, 5 o’clock Eastern Standard Time. I suppose, if we hadn’t, I probably would have had one large clock for where we were married, and several smaller ones indicating either places we had been, or wanted to go. I printed the clocks on photo paper which gives them a bit of a glossy shine, kind of like the glass on a real clock.

I want to keep up the tradition of an anniversary craft project, but next year will prove to be a challenge. The traditional gift is cotton, and the modern gift is china. I have no idea what I will do.