Growth Chart Ruler

Before we moved, we measured our kids on the laundry room wall every few months.

Nothing special, just a little line and their initial with their height and date.

When we moved, my husband entered the kids growth in an excel spreadsheet.

Because that's what engineers do, yo.

My kids aren't growing quite as quickly as they once were, so I knew I had some time to figure out a new solution for measuring the kids at our new house.

When I saw this ruler at Dear Lillie, I knew I had to make one myself.

I asked my husband to do the construction and he wanted details.

So I sent him a tutorial.

He recruited the younger two kids and set to work.

They took nails and hammers and started distressing the boards while I was at a PTA meeting.

Yep, their in their jammies.

My husband realizes how important pictures are to my blog posting, so he had the kids snap some pictures of him doing the construction.

Once he finished the construction I set to work painting the boards.

One of my favorite mixtures that I use is to paint is this dark brown paint from Michaels (you can find it in the paint section.  It was $7 but well worth it because it's lasted so long) mixed with mineral spirits.

You don't need much, just a squeeze of paint and about a tsp of mineral spirits.

It's the same paint combination I used on my pottery barn typewriter art knock off.

I really like how the color went on.

The kids did a great job of distressing the wood and the paint landed in all the right places.

The next part was a little intimidating to me since I am not known to be a perfectionist in my work.

My husband, however, is, and wanted the ruler to be as accurate as it could be.

I had him draw me up the measurements, and he left me with new knowledge of how to use a square.

I used my Silhouette machine to cut three different sizes of lines in vinyl.  

I had 1" lines, 1.5" lines and 2" lines.
I would put two 1" lines down, then one 1.5" line, then two 1" lines, then one 1.5" line and repeat the process.  At every foot, I would use a 2 inch line.

Once I was done, I put the board up against the wall.

The initial intention was to hang the growth chart in our laundry room six inches up just above our molding.

After leaning it against the wall, my husband realized he really liked it leaning and not mounted.

However, this now threw the numbers off.

So I took the numbers off, cut new ones and placed everything down six inches. The 6 foot mark ends up being right at the very top, but that's o.k. because no one in our family has any hope of reaching that line!

It was a tedious process, but I really like how it turned out. Bonus, it can move with us! So when our kids have kids, we can use it to compare their heights to their parents. But that's going to be at least 25 years from now, because our daughter can't date until she's 35!

My oldest son is now nearly as tall as I am.

Shocking moment as a mom when you can see eye to eye!

I even made one for my sister in law in exchange for them watching our dog while we were in Disneyland. It's grey and white and isn't meant to start on the floor. It's actually to be hung 8 inches up.

How do you keep a record of your kids growth?