How high do you want to count? I built a counter circuit to count rubber band twists for the space derby for the cub scouts with three cd4026 ICs. Just google cd4026, and flip to images and you will get the idea. It works, but is very tedious as each pin needs to be connected to each led segment (×7 for each digit). Otherwise go the Arduino route. The boards are cheap, you will be able to display the result on a PC, but some programming skill will be necessary