Kindness Advent 2019

I’m a little late posting this considering it’s December 16th, but we have been in full on Kelley kindness advent mode since December 1st.  Usually we set aside money to make all the things happen that we choose for our kindness advent, but this year, well this year medical bills are beyond legit…and that’s fine…it is what it is…so we decided to show kindness that required no money or that we already had the supplies for around our home.  I thought it was going to be more challenging than it was, but we totally brainstormed a bunch of great kindness activities that fit and we set off.

It has been really fun and great to watch our daily deliberate kindness activities fall into place.  There is still some planning that needed to happen so we did that in November and now it’s been pretty smooth sailing.  We did lose our day #8 and I could not remember what we were supposed to do that day and I couldn’t find our calendar where we mapped it all out at the time so you know, you win some, you lose some.  No worries.

I did find my list and wanted to share it here for future reference so without further ado:

**Send get well cards.  Give high 5s.  Let someone go ahead of you in line.  Write a teacher a kind note.  Draw a picture for a friend.  Make bookmarks and leave them at the library.  Paint wood circles/rocks and leave them around town.  Clean someone’s car.  Give out compliments.  Leave a treat for our garbage collector.  Send mail.  Pass out stickers.  Share Sonic happy hour.  Breakfast drop.  Return shopping carts.  Treat our teachers to a key fob.  Give out hugs.  Leave a treat for our mail carrier.  Donate some of our books to our pediatrician’s office.  Leave encouraging sticky notes on public bathroom mirrors.  Gift an ornament.  Leave chalk art around town.  Bake for our neighbors.  Leave encouraging notes on cars.  Load bubble gum & trinket machines with quarters.**

To accomplish keeping it spending free we did things like save a Sonic gift card our neighbors gifted us and used some of it to treat someone else to Sonic too.  To make bookmarks we used supplies we already had on hand and cut up cereal boxes from our recycling for our base.  We always have a stash of stickers and shared from that.  For our breakfast drop we made banana bread from bad bananas at the end of our week because bad bananas make the best banana bread.  For treats for our garbage collector and mail carrier we baked goodies from the ingredients we already had on hand and wrote kind notes.  We are donating gently used books from our own home library to our pediatrician’s office.  We made the ornaments we are gifting.  And over the past few months every time I see a quarter laying around our house I have tucked it away so we can load the bubble gum and trinket machines.  This year definitely took a little thinking and creativity, but we have all still so enjoyed our kindness advent.

This is our 9th year of doing our kindness advent and every year I have used the same little envelopes.  This year I made a a brand new set since I taught this craft at Camp Create earlier in November.  It was really fun and my heart needed some creativity…and major bonus…I adore our new advent set up.

We are still moving right along and I am documenting daily in my stories over on my instagram.  If you want to follow along head over HERE.

I always think back to the quote that began it all during my first round of deep grief after losing my mom:
“When your burden is heaviest, you can always lighten a little some other burden. At the times when you cannot see God, there is still open to you this sacred possibility, to show God; for it is the love and kindness of human hearts through which the divine reality comes home to men, whether they name it or not. Let this thought, then, stay with you: there may be times when you cannot find help, but there is no time when you cannot give help.”

-George S. Merriam

Nine years in and it still means just as much, if not more, than it did that very first year.