Words of kindness as expressed from two bright souls

I took the girls on Sunday for their picture with Santa like we do each year....this year would be a bit different.

I had printed these wonderful words of kindness from the Brave Girls blog and cut them apart...while we were out we were going to share this messages of joy and hope with some people we came across during our travels.

On the ride there my oldest read each saying. She wasn't really sure what we were doing...she kept asking me if people would look at her weird and why would she want to do this...we talked about how nice it is when someone says something nice to you; how it makes you feel good; or like my first grader says because of her amazing teacher "it fills your bucket".

We talked about how fortunate we are that we know we are loved by eachother and that we say thank you for all the things we have each day and that there are so many others that may not have someone to say a kind word to them or "fill their bucket" each day and that they could be just that person today...with this tiny piece of paper... they started to get it.....they continued reading all the strips and sorted them between the two of them into their favorites piles....they each picked their favorite that they wanted to give to Santa as well...

we stopped in the parking lot and I took their picture with their favorite strip:

Santa really liked his messages of kindness. The helpers even put them in his mailbox so he could have them later... we then headed out into the mall to find other that looked like they could use a pick me up...the mall we were at is very close to a senior center, so we made a lot of sweet folks very happy on Sunday... we found this super sweet clerk at Joanne's and she was so touched:

these two nice ladies were behind us in line and the girls thought they needed to be on the action:

and then my youngest (who was so afraid of talking to people at first when we started this) decided that this sweet man looked like he could use some kind words...so she ran and gave him one too...

by the end of our outting we had gotten our picture taken with Santa, each selected a new ornament to place on our tree, left some words of kindness in some random places around the mall (such as on the shelf and in a few baskets) and shared some very special moments with some random individuals. The girls want to print more and take them with us on our outting on Thursday...

I say to you that even small acts of kindness matter. It makes me smile so big when I think about my girls running after people at the mall to give them some words of kindness...and the idea that whoever was driving the car that was parked next to mine found some sweet words tucked into their door handle.... it may have been the nicest thing that person had heard all day.

I encourage you to go here and print out a set....will certainly change the way you look at things...

I have been doing a little crafting around our entire house being ill with sinus issues...I made these two layouts for the November challenges over at Birds of a Feather:

I am trying out to be their guest designer for January...fingers crossed for me...

Happy crafting...Lynda