Thanks to last week’s challenge of promoting lesser known bands, I now have a playlist on my i-Pod entitled “NEW”, which is full of great new songs my friends have told me about.  A comment led me to discover how much I liked Oscar-nominated music.  A.R. Rahman, the man who produced the soundtracks of both “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours”, is a new favorite who has at least five songs in my new playlist.  Another new favorite thing this week is Matt & Kim’s most recent album “Sidewalks”.

I will do some last minute promoting of my favorite bands by telling you when you can see them live in Kansas City in the near future.  Get your tickets for Two Door Cinema Club who is playing at the Beaumont Club this Friday.  Sleigh Bells will be a great summer kick-off concert when they are at the Midland on June 6.  And although a friend promoted them to me, I will continue to promote them and tell you that Matt & Kim perform at the Beaumont Club on June 22.

I think it’s fair to say that everyone is looking forward to summer, which is approximately 53 days away.  The concerts mentioned above are a fun activity for summer, but one of the best ways to spend summer vacation is to travel.  Every year, my family and I take a trip and it has amounted to me traveling to 17 different U.S. states.  I enjoy keeping track of my travels, so I have begun to document them on a map in my room.  With summer traveling right around the corner, this week’s challenge is to create a way to document your travels.

To begin my map, all I had to do was buy a map and some push pins and put one on every place on the map that I have been.  Missouri is pretty crowded with pins, but they spread from coast to coast, and even into Canada.  If a map is not your style, try some of these ways to document your travels:

• TripAdvisor.com: This website provides reviews of cities, hotels, attractions and much more, but the really cool thing they have is a Facebook application.  When you use the app, both Facebook and Trip Advisor let you create a virtual map of places you’ve been, as well as see where your friends have been.
• Scrap booking: Photos are a great way to document your travel experiences, but take it a step further by compiling them and writing descriptions of the places you’ve been.  Each trip you go on can have its own page filled with photos, personal comments, and festive decorations.
• Souvenir box: Filling a box with things you gather on your trips can help bring back memories of your time away.  Souvenirs are anything that remind you of your trip, but they may include postcards, sea shells, ticket stubs, and hotel pens.

By creating these ways to document your travels, you are probably getting excited for your vacations this summer.  According to travelchannel.com, the best vacation spots include Paris, Miami, Myrtle Beach and our very own Branson, Missouri.  If summer wasn’t on your mind before, it definitely is now.  So let’s go out this week, look back on old travels, look forward to new ones and conquer this challenge!