Wedding Shower Wednesday: Heart Shaped Map Gifts

Dear Em,
Rather than registering for typical gifts, your aunt Andrea registered at the Honeyfund. We weren't supposed to bring gifts to her shower, but her bridesmaids may have cheated. You see, I recently discovered Pinterest. I've known about Pinterest for a while now, but I was trying to avoid anything that might add to my already serious internet addiction. Since the other bridesmaids had made wedding shower & bachelorette boards that they were pinning away to, I had to join Pinterest so I could see what we were planning to plan. Sigh, once you go Pinterest, you never go back.

I was looking at the various "Andrea's Wedding" pins one day, when I saw something cute that your aunt Andrea had pinned herself. It was a set of three maps, cut into hearts, & framed on the wall. The maps highlighted the locations of where the couple got engaged, got married, & honeymooned. It was such a fun idea & looked so easy, I was excited to make your aunt Andrea something that she had pinned.

I decided instead of highlighting the locations of where they got engaged, where they got married, & their honeymoon, I would frame the maps of where each of them had grown up & where they were getting married. I think the idea was to repurpose maps, but that got a little tricky. First I looked through our weathered United States atlas that we keep in my car. We have written & highlighted all over our atlas, & I realized we probably still want use of all of the pages. I probably could have printed maps from MapQuest, but I wanted the maps to look professional. So, I ordered an atlas on Amazon. This was a smaller atlas, & some of the locations were separated onto two pages. That wasn't going to work for my project. So then I ordered three separate maps of three different states. When I got them, I realized they really didn't look like anything more special than what I could have printed from Google Maps. Sigh.

I made a heart template that would fit well in the frames, traced heart shapes over the areas of the maps I wanted displayed, & cut the heart shaped maps out. Then I taped the map hearts onto a square of gray card stock background that I had cut to perfectly fit in the frames.

The frames worked perfectly as a gift for Andrea & also decor for her wedding shower.

Since our Bride is from Rhode Island, but has been living in another state for five years, we also gave her a number of Rhode Island themed items with the frames. She smiled as we presented her with a Rhode Island shaped cutting board, Dels Lemonade mix, Olneyville New York System spices, Iggys Clamcake & Doughboy mixes, Rhode Island Hot Sauce, & Kenyon's Grist Mill Johnny Cake Mix. We were happy to give her a little piece of home for wherever her travels take her.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, my Pinterest addiction only started there. I'm sure unlimited projects await.

I love you so,
Mommy