DIY Cork Board Map

When we moved into our apartment, we had more furniture than could fit in most of our rooms. The only exception was our dinning room, which seems to be designed for a family of eight living in our two bedroom apartment. Seriously, it's bigger than both of our bedroom and has nothing but one tiny little eat-in kitchen table sitting in it. The dinning room in our last apartment was probably a fourth the size of our current one and was off-set by a large bay window area. Basically, it was a giant window with a table next to it. Not only do we have a big empty room, but we had a huge space of chalk-white walls with no decoration. It made me sad.

So, I got on Amazon and ordered a $10 "vintage-style" map to Modge-Podge onto a cork board to take up some of the space in our unnecessarily large dining room.

I could have done without the National Geographic logo.

I picked up a framed cork board on-post. Living overseas, you have to work with what you can get. There were cheaper boards on Amazon, but none of them would ship here on Prime and it wasn't worth it to pay the shipping. There was a grand total of one type and size of cork board at the store. If I was in the States, I probably would have just gone to Home Depot or a craft store and had the exact size cut and the map would have probably turned out better. Also, I could not get regular modge-podge, so I had to make it myself.

I also cannot write properly on chalkboard

Since my cork board was just slightly too small, I had to trim the map down. This didn't turn out too great at first, but after modge-podge-ing it onto the board, you couldn't notice my lines were slightly uneven. I may go back and paint the edges of the board and make it even less noticeable.

After gluing the map on, I ended up with a few creases. Most of them are over ocean area, so they aren't very obvious. I wasn't thrilled with how it turned out, but for less than $25 for the whole project, I can't complain too much. Since this will most likely end up ruined in our move back to the States anyway, I'll probably end up redoing it a little more accurately in the future.

Yes, I did add Greg's deployments

The map is 2 ft by 3 ft and is still dwarfed on this giant, empty wall, but it's getting somewhere. Eventually, I plan to surround it with pictures to help fill up a little more of the void. Now, all we need to do is actually travel some places so I can use up some of these extra pins!

Off Topic: I love my husband

Ever since we've been in Germany, it seems like we're constantly meeting people who have such difficulty in their marriages. Never have I encountered so many couples who bicker and argue at each other over absolutely nothing. Words can't describe how entirely out of place I feel when I'm surrounded by women complaining about how they don't get along with their husbands. Greg has commented how strange it is to him that men will look forward to going to training or to the field so they can "get a break" from their families. It seems like a foreign concept to actually enjoy spending time together with your spouse. Some days, we feel very out of place.

I'm not saying we don't have our moments of getting on each other's nerves, but I'm extremely thankful to still have such a great relationship after three years together.

Frankfurt Auto Show

After a bit of a break, I've finally gotten around to blogging again. It's been a pretty crazy two weeks around here and we've been spending a lot of time at home, but things are starting to settle down and we're getting back into our usual routine. On Sunday, we took a trip to Frankfurt to the big international auto show at the Messe Frankfurt.

Day Trip: St. Goar and Rhinefels

Last time I posted about visiting a castle, Burg Eltz, I made the mistake of including it as part of the Rhineland, which is misleading because it's technically in the Moselle Valley. Speaking of castles, we took a short trip today to visit some nearby ruins in St Goar on the Rhine River.