Just this past Sunday morning I was watching Savannah play and I’m pretty sure she grew three inches overnight.  Seriously, one day she was reaching up on tip toes and could barely reach a shelf and the next day she was happily pulling everything out of the baskets on the shelf.  Can anyone explain to me how that happens?  It is also a good thing it is summer because all of her pants are basically capris now.

Since I have a feeling she is going to keep growing (no matter how many times I tell her to stop) I’m loving one of our latest DIY projects.  So when Savannah reaches 5 feet tall, which is probably going to be next week, I’ll be able to look back and at least remember when she was still a tiny tot.

If you’re not the most comfortable with power tools than this is a perfect project for you to take on.  Mostly because it doesn’t require any!  I guess we did use a power sander to get the board nice and smooth but if you don’t mind using a little elbow grease you can sand it yourself.

It all starts with picking the straightest, smoothest board you can find.  We used a 6 foot piece of 1 x 8 poplar.  We used poplar mainly because it was cheap.  :)  Then my husband gave the board a nice sanding.  I just like to always clarify that the hairy manly hands in pictures do not belong to me.

After sanding we stained the board using left over stain from our dresser to TV stand make-over.   The stain is such a nice dark color that it only needed one coat.

This next part was definitely not hard, but it is tedious.  Using a tape measure we marked out every inch along the edge and used painters tape to create thin lines for the ruler markings.  In the photo below you can faintly see the pencil marks.  Our goal was to have it look as much like a regular ruler as possible, just extra large.

If you are making your own ruler here is something to keep in mind- if you will be hanging the ruler on the wall or leaving it on the ground.  Because that will make a difference in where you start counting your inches.   I knew I wanted to hang our ruler on the wall and above our tall baseboards.  So we measured from the floor to just a little bit above our baseboards and then started the lines on the ruler at 10 inches.

Once the entire board was marked off it was time to paint.  Some left over white paint from some project or another and a small foam brush was all it took.  We made it so the lines wrapped all the way around the side of the board too.

To create the numbers I cut them out of cardstock with my cricut and used the relief as the stencil.  I used a pencil to trace the outline and then just hand painted the numbers in with a tiny paint brush.   See how close the 1 foot mark is to the bottom of the board to allow for our baseboards?

And once the ruler was all finished and painted we hung it up in the corner of our living room!

For some reason my one year old did not get the memo that she was supposed to be my model.  She just wanted to wiggle, what is up with that?

“Oh me?  You want me to sit still for a moment and be cute?”  (Her curly hair.  I die.)

Despite the time needed to tape off every line for each inch, this was actually a fast and easy project.  And every year on her birthday as we mark on there how Savannah grows, and any future children, it will be a project we will treasure for a lifetime.