When I found out we were pregnant, I was all over Pinterest finding fun things to do to track our journey. One thing that we did that was a lot of fun, was taking pictures by a chalkboard to watch my bump grow! (My husband might disagree, as getting a good angle on a growing pregnant girl can be difficult!) He survived and we got really good at getting the picture done in only a few snaps by the time it was all said and done with!
The first thing I had to do was find a chalkboard to track the week number and size of the baby. This was actually a lot harder than I had imagined. Originally, I planned on up-cycling an old large picture frame into a chalkboard, like I did when I distressed this old picture frame. After several trips to various thrift shops, this just wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t find anything that was just the right frame size or style, so I decided to just find a chalkboard. I went to Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Gordmans, and finally settled on one from Jo-Anns. This hunt was almost as bad as trying to find one to make. They were either too big, too small, or too EXPENSIVE! I ended up getting one that was going to work for our needs. I think it was $49.99, but I had a 50% off coupon, so that worked for me!
The expensive part was actually figuring out the chalk for the chalkboard. After researching how to do good chalkboards, I found everyone said that chalk markers were the way to go. They were almost $10 for 4 markers and I wish I wouldn’t have bought them. In fact, below is my first picture with the chalkboard and I wasn’t happy at all with how the chalk markers turned out. I was even more upset when I went to take it off to do the next week and the markers had stained the chalkboard! As a very hormonal pregnant woman, I was very upset and in tears due to the fact that these expensive markers ruined my board! I ended up having to buy chalkboard paint and repainting the chalkboard. I then decided to get colored chalk and do it the old fashioned way! I was much more happy with the result, but this is why Week 15 is missing. I just ended up starting at Week 16 instead.
Ok, so now that I got through my rant about how much I hated those chalk markers, it is time to show you the final pictures! I must say, looking at these, I am glad I switched to the old school chalk, as it looks much better! Though some weeks it seemed like such a chore, I actually enjoyed spending time making these boards. It was fun to pick which colors and lettering I was going to do.
