Travel Tradition T-Shirts

Every summer my mom, brother and I meet my aunt and two cousins in a different city for a whirlwind weekend. What started back in San Francisco in 2008 has become one of our most anticipated annual family traditions. This year, we found ourselves in Portland, Oregon.

In honor of our sixth city, my mom and I decided to make t-shirts for the weekend using iron-on paper. We weren't expecting anyone to wear them or take them seriously, but we still wanted them to look as realistic as possible. 

Using stereotypical kids camp t-shirts as our inspiration, we picked the brightest color we could find at Michaels - neon yellow. We planned to iron on text to the t-shirts so we had to wash them first.

We bought iron-on paper at Michaels. After spending some time thinking of clever text, we printed the text out from Microsoft Word. The trick is to print using "mirror" format in Word so the text will print backwards...and then appears correctly once ironed on to the t-shirt.

We used a paper cutter to cut away the excess paper around the text. Between the six of us, we have three boys and three girls, so a few trips ago we nicknamed ourselves the "Girls Team" and the "Boys Team" - clever right?! :)

With team names on the front, and a list of cities on the back, we added our names to the sleeve of the t-shirt. Here's my brother's name being ironed on. We didn't get any action shots of the ironing process, because it was a very slow moving and hot process. In the future, we might not want to attempt any ironing projects on a 90 degree day. 

Ironing on the text is pretty easy. You just place the paper where you want it on the t-shirt, and slowly press onto the shirt with the iron for about one minute. Moving the iron in a circular motion to make sure it doesn't stick, you'll then slowly peel away the paper from the shirt leaving only the text.

Here's what it looks like once the paper is peeled away. We were really happy with how our shirts turned out; they looked like we had them made at a real print shop!

On the back, we listed all of the cities we've visited together over the last six years. For those Amazing Race fans out there, we used Phil's catchphrase from the finale episode where he tracks how many cities/miles the teams have traveled! And, we had to include "What else are we doing?!" our own catchphrase that has helped us decide what to see and do on these trips for many years. :)

Two countries. Six cities. And more than 5,800 miles of fun.

San Francisco 2008

Seattle 2009

Denver 2010

Chicago 2011

Vancouver 2012

Portland 2013

What else are we doing?!

We quoted Phil from the Amazing Race again when gifting our shirts to the family. Everyone had a great laugh over the shirts, and while nobody wore theirs as we trekked through the streets of Portland, it became a popular pajama shirt. :)

While this wasn't our most challenging MIHM project, it was a lot of fun to make silly gifts for our family. In Portland, we ate delicious food, tasted great beers, and lucked out with sunny weather. And when the trip was just about over, we took a few family photos in the hotel room all wearing our matching shirts...but we'll keep those for the family album, not the blog. ;-)