'Murica Christmas

**Warning...text AND picture heavy post**

Before we start, THIS is what our wall previously looked like. It DESPERATELY needed some help. There is no excuse for this wall. Since we moved in, we couldn't decide what we wanted. We had been throwing around a few ideas for awhile, but we couldn't commit to any of them.

Now we are going to back track a bit to a time a few months ago when Rob mentioned that he might want to cover our big, empty living room wall with a map. Now, I love a map as much as anyone, but I wasn't sure if I was a huge fan of covering our 16 foot wall with a huge map. When I saw that a friend pinned a picture of a map made out of girly wallpaper, I just KNEW that this was the perfect compromise.

So... I enlisted the help of my bestie, Emily (learn about Emily and her awesome husband by clicking the Main Characters tab on the right). See, she and I made a little deal that instead of exchanging Christmas gifts this last year, we would give up our time to assist each other in a project. She had NO IDEA what she was in for... *insert evil laughter*

I decided that I'd ATTEMPT to do this as a surprise for Rob. Our first step was buying the material. We decided to make America 'Murica a different color because OBVIOUSLY it is awesome: 

After we bought the material, we kicked Rob out of the house for an entire day to start our project. First, we measured bulletin board paper to the size that we needed. We measured 12 feet two times and taped them together so that they were the height of the entire wall. This is what it looked like:

Then, we attempted to use the projector to project the map onto the paper so that we could trace it. This is the map that we used:

This didn't work at all because we couldn't pull the projector far enough from the paper to make it the right size. 

This is the point where we decided to bring it to Emily's studio (Did I mention that she is ALSO the owner of the most amazing Fitness Studio in town?). Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of this, but after a few mishaps, we FINALLY got the map up and traced.

We decided to use an X-Acto knife to cut out all of the continents so that we could later use the big piece of paper as a stencil. This is the point that poor Emily, who had been feeling under the weather, fell asleep while cutting Europe. I made the executive decision to stop the workflow for the day and send her home to get better. 

During the week of Em trying to get over her sickness, I was a busy bee pinning the continents to the material and cutting them out to prepare for finishing the project!

Let's fast forward to a week later when Em felt somewhat better. We got together again for one last 7 hour day. We put the stencil back up (and leaked this photo to the social media world) and got to work.

The next step was the tricky part. I had previously looked up TONS of tutorials and decided to try to use the starch and iron method. I had tested this when we first bought the material, and it worked really well. When doing the map, we fell into a rhythm where Em sprayed each material and held it up while I came behind her with the iron and ironed the pieces to the wall. Occasionally, we had to spray the pieces again while they were up on the wall. I'm pretty sure that there was more laughter and frustration than ironing for the most part because the stencil kept falling. The tiny islands were easy to put up, but we struggled a bit with the bigger pieces of the continents. I'm pretty sure that we fought the most with Europe. Incredibly, the bigger the continent, the easier it went on (and the better it held). 

Once all of the continents were up, we ripped off the stencil (YAY) and re-ironed the pieces that weren't holding strong. Then, we got to the fun part....!!!

Em used her fancy sorority girl handwriting and a gold paint pin to add the names of each continent. This part didn't photograph well (that doggone gray wall NEVER photographs true to color), but trust me - it's beautiful in person! I told her that if I could have a hidden talent, I'd choose to have her fancy handwriting! While she was doing this, I was putting a border around the continents. I used a white paint marker, but I may eventually go over it with a darker color. We will leave with it this way for awhile to see if we change our minds. I also printed some pictures of silhouettes of different objects to represent each continent. I attached each of these using glue dots. Today, I decided to print pictures of me and Rob to put on all of the places that we've visited. Obviously, we need to travel more!

So, here's the finished product! I just couldn't get a picture that truly showed the beauty of this wall. Y'all, I'm SO IN LOVE WITH IT.

Oh...AND...just for kicks and giggles, here is a picture of the living room RIGHT after we bought the house. The big wall is on the left of the picture. 

As far as Rob and how much he liked it...well, HE LOVED IT!!! He even came out of his Facebook hiatus to type, "Easily the coolest house project yet" on the first picture that I shared! I feel like it just adds so much color and fun to our living room. A few months ago, my grandma visited our house and told us that she was surprised that we didn't have more color in our living room. Since then, we ordered a yellow couch, a navy rug, and we created this SUPER colorful wall art. Hey granny, is it colorful enough now?? :) Our next plans for the living room include painting behind the built-ins (maybe turquoise or even something more fun like white polkadots), reupholstering the chair that we bought at the thrift store a few weekends ago, and putting up mantle that my dad just finished fixing for us! In the meantime, I will be upholding my end of #projectChristmas and helping Em with a project at the studio! 

Have any of you ever tried a project like this? Did you know that spraying material with starch and ironing it onto the walls would work? I hope that you all enjoyed your weekend and STAY WARM with this crazy, chilly weather!