Growth Charts

Sometimes I am a bad mom - but in weird ways.  For instance, I have letters that I wrote every month and a gorgeous baby book for my oldest daughter Ellie but no growth chart and I never kept track of height and weight otherwise.  With Abby, I still owe her a 5 month letter (at 5 1/2 months) but I will have a growth chart for her when she is actually able to stand!

I saw a cute wood growth chart on How Does She? and decided to give it a shot with a few modifications.  I am actually pretty happy with how it turned out and I love that it is portable.  We aren't in our "forever house" so I didn't want to do anything right on the wall or door frame where it wouldn't have been able to make the move too.

 

I still have to finish the other one for Abby but the wood is painted and waiting in the garage so by the time she is standing, it should be done.

I started with a 1" x 6" x 6' board.  I gave it a couple coats of white paint (already had the paint out for our bathroom redo - more about that debacle later).  Then using a tape measure and pencil, I marked off every inch from 1' to 6' since I had planned to hang it 1' off the ground.  No way are my children going to be even close to 6 feet tall so that worked for my purposes but if height runs in your family, you can start your hash marks at whatever point you want - just make sure that you don't start taller than their birth height so you can include a mark there.  Ellie loved being able to see how much she has grown since she was born.

I found that using a metal L square made getting a nice square AND straight line from the edge quite easy.  I used a black Sharpie, lined up my square with the pencil mark and made each inch mark 1 inch long and each foot mark 2 inches long.  If you look closely you can see the little flub on the middle mark - trying to extend the line with my Sharpie was harder than one might think.  Whoops.

I found the pink lady bug (and a pink dragonfly for Abby) at Michael's - I think they were under $5 each.  My Cricut got some use cutting out the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 as well as Ellie's name in vinyl.  That took a little bit of time to get Ellie's name on (somewhat) straight as it is 5 individual letters not joined together.  Transfer paper is kind of beyond my skill level at the moment.  Yes, her name is totally off center and someday I will probably fix it but not right now.

Once the Sharpie dried, my wonderful husband hung it in Ellie's room and we set about to measure ourselves.  I always thought I was 5'5" but now am 5'4" or so.  Apparently, I am now the amazing shrinking craft binger.  AWESOME!

Then it was Ellie's turn - turns out she is 2'11" of pure cuteness.  Cuteness who needs a haircut.  And won't wear matching socks.  Cute and quirky and ridiculously adorable.

______________________

Hope you like it - thanks for stopping by!  I am linking to my very first link party - go me!