One of my favorite blogs to read is Young House Love.  They have great, usable DIY  ideas.  I decided to borrow some of their ideas to make custom art for my home office.  Like this map.

Here’s my DIY version, complete with places Ben and I have traveled.  I LOVE this idea.  It’s always changing, too.  I just need a map with Alaska to update the trip we took last year.

I bought a cheapo frame (I still need to paint it) and removed the glass.  I had a roll of cork from Michael’s, so I cut a piece to size.  Then I put the map in the mat and put the cork behind and put the back on again.  I had some simple sewing pins, too, and I liked the way the colors looked with the map.  Voila!

Here’s a close up of our map:

Going along with the travel theme, I also created similar vacation jars. 

I have a vacation shelf in my office complete with vacation jars and books.  I try to buy a book from all of our vacation spots, just to show some photos to people and remember where we were.  Some of the items I have from our vacations are too big for the jars (like a map from Savannah and a booklet from our Alaskan boat tour)  so those are to the side. 

I simply put all the items in a smooth-sided jar and made a label on my label maker. 

I like to get sand from everyplace we visit.  I feel like I have a little piece of oceanfront property.  I used different, smaller jars for the sand, but used the same labels.

YHL collects postcards from vacations.  I have a slightly more juvenile collection.  Squished pennies.  Rather than sitting in my drawer, I put them in a pretty flower shaped bowl for display on my bookshelf.

I try to buy a souvenir spoon from each place, too.  Excuse the spoon rack, I need to make a more modern, less cluttered one.  I see these every time I go into our kitchen and it’s a nice little reminder of where we’ve been!