Two weeks and counting till Christmas eve. For a last-minute DIY project sure to please doting grandparents, MomSpeaker Jeanne McCullough's got an easy watch-me-grow craft project up her sleeve. Years of enjoyment out of something you can finish in mere minutes.
Here's a quick post for a quick idea for the grandparents on your gift list: Grandkids' Measuring Stick. My husband's dad "Pop" (as the grandkids all call him) has a thing for measurements and likes to keep a record of things. He's always curious about how tall each kid is. In fact, I can't even take credit for this crafty idea because this is actually something Pop implemented when Dave and his sister were young. Pop doesn't like marked-up dirty walls, so he fashioned a tall stick into a measuring stick to record their heights as they grew up. He still brings that same stick out every once in a while (maybe to see if anyone has started shrinking yet — haha). So really all I did here was take his original idea and gift it back to him.
You'll just need a tall, flat piece of wood — they'll even cut it down for you at any big hardware store. It needs to be about 6' tall, because you never know if someone is going to have a crazy growth spurt when they turn 16! You can get really creative and paint it up all fancy. However, I intentionally left this very simple and marked it with permanent marker, because Pop likes things nice and simple. I marked the heights for all 3 grandkids at birth and then at each birthday.
This is something he will keep forever and it's a great tradition. Pop even brought it out at Red's 5th birthday! The added bonus is that if a grandparent ever moves, they can take this with them, unlike a marked-up wall.
Jeanne McCullough is a Montgomery County, PA mom. This post was adapted from her blog Mom Hearts Pinot.
