Scratching The Surface and Stamping Our Passports.(Cuba)

A few posts back you all got to see the lovely globe that we got for Christmas from my brother and sister in law. They also gave us this super cool scratch off map. Just like scratch off lottery tickets, you scratch off the countries that you have visited. 

It comes in a tube to keep it safe.

The Scratch Map is wrapped in tissue paper to protect the scratch-able surface.

Checking it out. It was at this point that we realized scratching with a quarter was not going to be an option, some of the countries are really small (although the circle in the lower left corner by Eliana's hands is an enlarged detail of Europe, so we got to scratch a couple of them twice).

Problem solved, we used a toothpick to scratch the countries off. Since we just got this, it was fun for the kids to be able to go through and scratch all of the countries from last year too.  

El gets her turn scratching.

All of the ones that have been scratched off so far are either blue or orange. The unscratched ones are gold (as you can see, this endeavor should keep us busy for a few years). 

Since the map is laminated, the gold scratch-able surface comes off very easily with a toothpick, so it was easy for the kids to do, and they had a lot of fun doing it (even though it didn't win us $10,000 ;)) If you would like to get your own Scratch Map, you can find it here.


Also, I'm sure you have been just dying to see what would be done for this months passport stamp. :) It was a toss up between a nice botanical, or something more political. But let's be honest, I'm not really much for politics and botanicals are lovely. So, it was decided. I would carve a simplified version of the national flower of Cuba, The White Mariposa, also known as Butterfly Jasmine. 

The drawing for transfer to the potato. 

The final test run before stamping the passports.

See the step by step process that I use for making the stamps here, and let's not forget the time I foolishly carved the stamp backwards. Also, you can see the making of the passports here. 


Next week is The Chinese New Year and it is also our final week before our end of the month Cuban Celebration. Check back and see what we're up to.