We Met, We Married, We Live

Melissa and I snuck in not one, but TWO craft nights this month.  (Catch up on the first photographic craft night here)  I was loving a lot of the map pieces that were being pinned on pinterest, but one in particular caught my eye.

Source

I loved the idea and we decided to do a map project for craft night.  I headed to AAA to grab some maps…As a side note, I have been a AAA member since I was 1 year old.  My great grandma never wanted me to get stranded and since AAA covers whatever vehicle the card member might be in, it traveled in my diaper bag with me.  A perk of AAA is that you get free maps whenever you want, so off I went to secure the needed maps.  I grabbed Sioux Falls, St. Louis, and Omaha.

Upon arriving at Melissa’s, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do for sure so we decided to improvise.  Melissa had a Fisker’s circle punch, so that settled it, I would do circles.  As I thought about it more, I decided I want to try some paper embroidery.  We headed to Hobby Lobby and I bought some red embroidery thread and a needle.  If I were to redo this, I would probably measure things and make templates, but in the spirit of craft night, I winged it.

First up was “we met”.  I decided to embroidered a heart.

Yep, you’ll notice the center of that heart is the Ameristar Casino.  In the mood for a how we met story?  Good, because I’m in the mood to type it.  One of my first assignments when I started work was to pass my:  Series 7, Series 66 and PHR certification tests.  This took from July until April of the following year to accomplish.  To celebrate our passing, a bunch of friends and I headed out to a new club that had just opened at Ameristar casino, “Home”.  Now we love to dance, so as soon as we got there, we headed to the dance floor, never mind the fact that we were the only one’s out there.  After a few songs, the dance floor starting filling in and I happened to look across the crowd and see a really tall cute guy in a black shirt (we’re not really that tall, I’m 5’10″ and he’s 6’3″, but inexplicably, a lot of short people live in Missouri, and I regularly end up feeling like a giant).  He seemed to be attempting to get my attention and come over to dance with me, however he spent a fair amount of time working up the courage to come over.  After some consultation with his friends, he managed to make his way over to me and introduce himself.  We had a good time dancing and talking, since he was from Nebraska (my neighboring home state), we talked a lot about the Midwest and then spent FAR too long discussing rhubarb.  No, I’m not joking.  We both love rhubarb pie, crisp, and I was explaining rhubarb wine to him.  Apparently, all this left a good impression on him because he called me a few days later to invite me on a date and the rest, as they say is history.

Next up, I decided to give wedding bands a whirl.

We were married in my home town, Sioux Falls, SD.  Mostly because we were contemplating a move and didn’t want to have to travel back to St. Louis to attend our wedding if we ended up moving before wedding day.

Last, but not least, I made a house for our first house…I don’t think I need to go into those details since ya know, that’s what this whole blog is about

After I had my map parts, I needed to figure out the perfect way to display them.  I’m not good with fonts, I don’t have Photoshop, so I decided to keep with the theme of making it my own, I would embroider the date for each of these events on some bigger paper and frame the whole thing.  I headed to Gordman’s and found the perfect frame.  It was $9.99 and I had a 20% off coupon, so this was perfect.  Then, I headed back to Hobby Lobby to find some scrap book paper and more embroidery thread.  Scrapbook paper was 50% off, so total I spent 75 cents on scrapbook paper and thread.

When I got home, I tried my first run of dates free hand and this failed miserably, I decided to make a template on the computer and print it off.  I taped it to the back of the scrapbook paper and embroidered my numbers.  This worked great and I was able to find a rhythm pretty quickly.

Tada!  The finished project.  I didn’t really have a scientific method on this, just went with what I thought looked good, and I have to tell you, I’m in LOVE with it.  I can’t believe this on a whim!

How about you?  Are you lovin’ map art?  Have you embroidered paper?  Did you bring your ottoman outside to your patio this weekend??

Linked up with A Bowl Full of Lemons , Tip Junkie, DIY Show-off, It’s a Blog Party, Newlyweds on a Budget, 5 minutes just for me, Young House Love, House of Earnest, and Bower Power.

Julie over at Peanut Butter Fingers, just made her own embroidered map out as a gift for her husband for their 1st anniversary.  It turned out so cute!!!  If you’re looking for more embroidered map inspiration, head over and check her out!

Also linked with the DIY Show-off.  Click on the button to see other awesome DIY projects!

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