Well I think this has been the greatest lacking of entries I have ever done since this project began.

 

I am going to completely honest and say I have not documented all that I have done for these days and am not going to pound my brain to recall what I did on each of the days. I am getting older and my brain cells might explode at such an attempt. I am also going to be completely honest in saying that during the past ten days I have not had any days that I ended with not having completed an act of kindness. Some may have been smaller than others of course, but my goal has been set this year and I am very conscious of that goal each morning when I wake up.

 

I am just definitely not the greatest in keeping up with documentation during the holiday season. With the holidays still in progress, I hope that I may somehow figure out a way to ensure I keep a bit better tabs up with the blog.

 

I will say that during the past ten days a few of the things I have done were:

 

• Offered to, and did watch a child so that his mother could be free to shop on the all so popular Thanksgiving Shopping Weekend
• Donated to a charity raising money for hunger
• Sent a get well card to someone from work who has been out ill
• Made some cookies and brought into work (safer for my hips too!)
• Dropped of yet more outgrown clothes for Good Will

 

Those are the highlights.

 

My goal now is to get better at my blogging as all of the holiday festivities consume so much of my time!

I haven’t vanished this week…just a terribly busy holiday week…. I hope to find a bit of time at some point to get on and update my days, put some new spotlights on as well as update a few other things! Even when I can’t get time to post…my life is still moving and keeping my goal of kindness moving forward I will get them posted soon!
Keep smiling!

This week has been a whirlwind kind of week. So much so that today I feel completely worn out and I hope I am not coming down with something.

So todays listing of the kindness tasks for these days will be short and sweet.

On Tuesday, I met with some friends and I didn’t get together with them on Halloween because I had trick or treating to do with my children so when I met with them I brought them each little bags of Halloween candy. Just a little unexpected token I thought I would bring to add some smiles.

On Wednesday, I sent out some little “hello have a great day” cards to random addresses I chose from the phone book

On Thursday, I bought two raffle tickets for a charity. Wouldn’t it be fun if I won something? Of course if I don’t it doesn’t matter.

Today, honestly as I said I am feeling really drained. Even had to take a nap to try and power charge myself. I can’t say I have done anything special. Of course the day isn’t over……..and you never know I may get a sudden burst of energy from somewhere

Technorati Tags: random acts of kindness, giving, helping others

I adore puppies so I just couldn’t resist sharing this wonderful program.
Puppies Behind Bars is a program developed in 1997 by Gloria Stoga which has prison inmates raise and train dogs to become guide dogs for the blind. The program gives in twofold, for it gives to those who receive the dogs trained in the program, and it also gives to the inmates who grow from their experience in training and raising the puppies.

Training guide dogs takes an immense amount of one on one time, and the inmates become responsible for the puppies from about 8 weeks of age until 18 months. They become the provider, the caregiver, the trainer and the companion of the dog for this whole amount of time. It is often the first time many of the inmates get to experience giving and receiving of unconditional love. They also grow from the responsibility of the care which they must provide for the dogs 24 hours a day.

When the puppies approach the end of their training period, they are sent out to families or homes outside of the prison to prepare the dogs for surroundings which they will not have encountered in the prison ranging from new sounds such as doorbells, or experiences such as riding in a car.

At the end of their training, the puppies are then evaluated as to whether they will be suitable as guide dogs. If they are, they are then sent to the guide dog schools they came from to complete their training. If they don’t meet the guidedog standards, then they are giving away to families with blind children. Either case, the dogs become the companions for someone needing them.

The Puppies Behind Bars program currently is run in 3 womens prisons and 4 mens prisons all in the New York, Connecticut area. They are hoping to continue to expand their very successful program.

Supporting this charity can be done through donations or…….they are always looking for more “sitter” families

For more information please visit their site www.puppiesbehindbars.com

Technorati Tags: puppies behind bars, guide dogs, charity, giving, kindness, helping others

My daughter has been asking and asking lately for me to teach her to knit. Mind you, I think the only knitting I have done is making pot holders! So this weekend I decided I would take the time and try to refresh enough of my basic skills so that I could at least help her learn to knit. She is only seven so it truly isn’t the easiest of tasks.

Of course I can’t start her on a craft without providing my boys with some sort of activity to work on as well, so some of Saturday was spent looking through a variety of craft projects deciding what was best. The boys decided hands down that they would learn about modeling. So yes the kindess for the weekend involved teaching my children new things….and oh btw…she is doing pretty good with those needles three days later now.

I did work a bit on some of my geeky IT projects that I am trying to do to help assist some people, however more of the time was spent answering the endless supply of questions my kids had to ask me…and believe me …for someone who knows nothing about cars…looking at the model specs of car engines to help my boys out is no easy task.

Yesterday was World Kindness Day, so Sunday evening, I filled colorful chinese carry out type containers with filler and candies. When I got to work I ran around putting them on people’s desks in my area. Just my little World Kindness day celebration. Of course I did get a few odd looks from people when I explained that it was World Kindness Day. I don’t believe too many people know about such a day, and I don’t think people often even think about such days. However to me it is an important day, and I did my part to do something to celebrate.

My kids even partook. They each came home to tell me of things they did during the day to be kind and help out others. Kids have such a wonderful time helping others, I wonder what point it is that we exactly begin to lose that simple stage of life.

Technorati Tags: kindness, giving, candy, simple, kids helping world kindness day

 

Today is World Kindness Day! So reach out, do something nice for someone. Open that door, give that extra smile, go out of your way to do something extra for someone.

Take a moment to be kind to yourself. Put a smile on your face and other’s faces as well.

Technorati Tags: world kindness day, kindness, giving, smile

I have to say, this is truly a unique food drive. Walking into a hall of looming giants made of cans of beans, tomatos, soup or any other variety of canned food. Teams of architects and engineers come together to design amazingly artistic sculptures consisting of canned goods with designs ranging from mermaids to racing cars. Their purpose? It is best stated by their mission statement - Canstruct a World Without Hunger.

Canstruction is a collaborative effort of Society for Design Administration, American Institute of Architects, and other members of the design and construction industry. To raise hunger awareness, canstruction design competitions are held in over 50 cities across the country. The teams consisting of architects and engineers compete building wonders made entirely of canned goods in a variety of categories. The main requirement? The sculptures must be made of canned food. This creates a challenge for the teams in finding the cans which will present the right colors, and of course finding enough of the cans.

The 13th annual Canstruction event just opened up at the New York Design Center in New York City, and to view these masterpieces, the entrance price is just a can of food.At the close of the local exhibitions, all of the food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, elderly and day care centers. All of the winners of the local events will compete in a national competition to be held in Los Angeles next June.

For more information and to view some of their incredible designs you can visit their website at www.canstruction.org

Technorati Tags: canstruction, food drive, hunger, awareness, kindness, giving, helping others, food banks

Task One Option:

Drop a few coins in an area where children play, where they can easily find them.

Task Two Option:

Copy a favorite recipie and give it to someone

Task Three Option:

Buy a copy of your favorite book and donate it to your local library or hospital

I didn’t follow any of the kindness tasks today, but I found a way to contribute to helping a group and putting smiles on my kids faces. Girl Scout Cookies!

Honestly I am not a sweets type person (I will go salty greasy appetizers any day over desserts!). I am not saying I don’t eat sweets… in fact I believe part of the reason I don’t get a bunch of sweets is because of the temptation. Unfortunately with kids sweets always seem to be around…fortunately for me, my kids like things I don’t (something about blue jello hits me wrong). But…….who can resist Thin Mint girl scout cookies? I mean it is almost a justified indulgence in sweets since it helps raise money for girl scouts!

So thin mint indulgence and helping out. How sweet it is!

Technorati Tags: girl scout cookies, charity, kindness, giving

Today Starbucks Coffee started their holiday campaign. With it, they hope to inspire kindness in the holiday season and hopefully beyond with their Cheer Pass. A team of Starbucks employees are going to begin passing out over 500,000 cheer passes asking one thing…….that the recipient passes the cheer along.

Each cheer pass is numbered, so the recipient can go to Cheer Pass where they can share their story of goodwill, and track the path of goodwill the cheerpass has taken. They then pass the cheer pass along to someone else. The hopes that one act of kindness will lead to another, which will lead to another. People who don’t have a cheerpass can also go to the site to get their own pass to start passing along its kindness path to track and see how far it will go.

I myself am going to get one. I am truly curious of how far the cheer pass will travel!

This is a wonderful idea! Kudos to Starbucks!

Technorati Tags: cheer, kindness, giving, holiday cheer, starbucks

With Thanksgiving coming up I thought I would offer a few ideas for kindness and giving. They are all very simple ideas yet ones which will reap rewards for everyone involved.

Offer to assist in a soup kitchen for Thanksgiving Dinner.
Most soup kitchens have an abundance of volunteers for Thanksgiving, because it is a time many think of those who don’t have someone to share turkey with, so it is best that you call early and talk with the various agencies. However, if they are full up with volunteers, it is a great time to offer to help out for other days.

Hand out food to Homeless
Not all those in need of food, or kindness, go to the soup kitchens or shelters. Perhaps some of all those leftovers from the family turkey dinner could be used by a person sitting under blankets on the sidewalk

Contribute food to a food bank
Many food banks run programs just for Thanksgiving so that needy families can also have a Thanksgiving meal. They could use the extra contributions! Also many churches accept food at this time to hand out to needy family. If you look around there are many places which will gladly accept gifts of dry goods.

Thanksgiving Card
I came across a great idea on the site Do One Nice Thing - www.doonenicething.com They will send Thanksgiving Cards made by people to shelters and food banks to be included in the Thanksgiving food bags. Create a card and think how much more special getting that bag of food will be to someone!

Open Your Dinner
Invite someone over who would otherwise be spending Thanksgiving alone. It is a difficult time for people who are far away from family, unable to be with loved ones, or have no one to share it with. Open your heart and your door and invite someone to share the warmth of your Thanksgiving

There are certainly more ideas, so hopefully this will get minds churning.

Technorati Tags: thanksgiving, giving ideas, helping others, food banks, shelters, helping others