I’ve been wanting to make this sign for our living room for a couple years now (no joke).  With the impending arrival of Baby Boy #3, I found an extra sense of urgency and finally got it done.

I started by writing out adjectives and interests for individual family members, and things we value/appreciate as a whole.  I grouped the ones for each individual together, and the generic family ones together, and alternated them on each line.  I had to do some rearranging when it came time to print so I could fit have the “individualist” lines two to a line, and the family ones in larger print.

I did this so long ago that I’ve had to make several adjustments due to the boys growing out of stages…

Jake used to be into cars and trucks.  Like, a lot.  He would line them up in a straight line and just have them going all over that place.  After he turned three, his interests have just shifted with time, from cars to legos to dinosaurs to dragons, and now: tanks.  He’s probably drawn hundreds of tanks at this point, haha.

And Josh picked up an interest in play-dough, which I thought should be added to his list instead of just “farts and crumbs and bruises” haha.

I feel like this sign will be a little time capsule for our family.  I know the interests for the boys will be keep changing, and these will be obsolete any day now.  But I really wanted to capture this stage of our lives.  I know it’s unique and special, and maybe when the boys are all grown up and gone, I can look back at this sign and truly appreciate how wonderful (and crazy) this stage was.

As for the making…I couldn’t quite find the right size of pre-made wood, so I bought two pieces from Michaels and Jeff put them together for me, to make the perfect size.

I then designed our fonts and lines on our Silhouette machine.  I tried finding a little bit of a pattern on the fonts, so it wasn’t TOO overwhelming, but I do like the changes in size and fonts on signs like these.   Then it was time to cut and transfer!

I’m not a perfectionist by any means…so some lines aren’t quite straight…but I’m pretty happy with the end result:

The only bummer is that we have different holiday signs for that part of our living room for Halloween and Christmas, so I only got to enjoy it up on our wall for a couple days, haha.  ‘Til January, my work of art!