DIY Ruler Growth Chart

I have been itching to make and share this project for quite some while! With April being the Month of the Military Child, I knew I had to get it done share and today!

I have fond memories of my dad measuring my siblings and I, and marking our height on a wall in our family home as we were growing up. I always loved seeing how much I had grown in the last few months.

As a parent, it’s nice to be able to look back at how much your babies have grown throughout their lives. One of the things about moving every few years though, is that there are no permanent walls. I was pretty bummed about not being able to keep an ongoing tally of how the girls have grown, so using a board, I made a “military life-friendly” one.

I had put this project off for a while, because I thought it would be much more complicated than it actually was. In reality, it took less than 15 minutes, all together. I had an event to attend shortly after I started painting the lines, so I left painting the numbers on for the next day. It worked better this way, so that I wouldn’t smudge any wet lines.

To start, I cut out a stencil out of card stock. I used my Cricut, but you could just as easily measure, and cut notches out of card stock.

I taped the stencil to my board, and used a foam brush to lightly dab on a small amount of paint. The girls wanted to give it a shot as well, and since it’s theirs, I let them. I ended up having to sand some of their extra paint off. Lesson learned: if you want it perfect, just do it yourself.

At this point, I had to leave for a spouses’ coffee, so I set the board up, so that it could dry. The next day, I can back and stenciled on the numbers. Voila! So easy!

Since we don’t have baseboards, this bad boy just rests up against the wall. I made sure it was nice and flush, when I measured each girl. Surprisingly, Ju went along with it really well.

I can’t wait to go back in a few months, to measure everyone again and see how much they’ve grown! We’ll be able to pack this up with us every time we move, and eventually it’ll find it’s place in our forever home.