Growth Chart

Our babies just grow so fast and it is especially fun to keep track of this in the early years and also to compare with their siblings.  I started this growth chart for Miss Priss last year and it has been a work in progress ever since!  I have finally gotten it hung in what is soon to be her newly redecorated bathroom and I am so relieved to have this up and ready.

I have been using it since I got the initial paint job on it, but had to make some small additions and find a place to hang it.  Since I started it, we had added another little girl to the family and I wanted to hang it somewhere that both girls could use it so that bathroom that the two of them share was a perfect spot for it to stay.

Not obvious by my earlier statement that I started this last year, this is in fact a very simple project and can be done in a few short hours.  Waiting on the paint to dry is the most time consuming part.  But of course, if you have a few children, a job, a husband and anything else to keep you busy, it might take you a little longer than a weekend.  

I do encourage you though to start tracking your measurements as soon as you can, even if the project isn't entirely done so that you don't miss out on any growth spurts.  I measured Miss Priss last night when I put it up and she has grown an inch or so since I started this and I would have been so sad to have missed that due to my lack of final completion.

Let's get started!

Growth Chart

You will need:

• 1" x 6" x 6" piece of wood
• paint
• paint brushes
• stencils for numbers
• pencil

Optional:

• embellishments

Start by painting the wood.  While this is drying you can get your stencils ready.  I cut out my stencils with my Cricut using the Cuttin' Up Cricut Cartridge.  I had to cut my stencils out more than once to make sure they were just the right size that I wanted.

Use a measuring tape and lightly mark 1 through 5 feet with a pencil so that you know where your numbers will need to go. Tape your stencils to your ruler using your pencil mark as a guide to find the center. I taped all of my numbers at once to make sure that was indeed what I wanted them to look like.

You can use a pencil to lightly trace the inside of your stencil.  You now have a choice...you can remove the stencil and use your steady hand to paint in the lines OR you can do what I did.  I went ahead and traced the inside with a light pencil, but I kept the stencil in place while I painted on the numbers.  After I let it dry for a few minutes I took off the stencil and did some touch up around the edges.

This part can be done the same way using some tape to make a small square to paint over the pencil mark for each foot.

When the paint is dry she is ready to hang.  Since I hung mine in the bathroom where we have a 3.5" baseboard I had to cut that much off the bottom of my ruler before I nailed it to the wall.  If you are planning to do the same, you should do this before so that you don't have to sand and repaint the ruler after all that hard work!