Spreading Kindness

We've been working hard to do nice things for other people lately.

Nothing super expensive or super involved.

I'm just finding little ways most days to show people we care about them.  We haven't really done any random acts of kindness.  We're focusing on building relationships with our neighbors, teachers and friends instead.

We live by lots of nice people so we are working on getting to know them.  We have lived in our city for a little over two years and still feel like we have a lot of people to befriend.

We've baked for many of them all lately.  Sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Monster cookies, etc.  You name it and we've baked it to share.  Olive loves helping me in the kitchen so it's been a fun way to do something together to make other people smile.

We have elderly neighbors that love having visitors.  They rarely leave their house so I've been making a point to go over once a week to say hello.  I bring the kids and their faces light up.  They want to know about school, what we're up to and we take care of their sweet tooth.  Olive has started praying for them and asks to go over to see them regularly.

We also have neighbors with young kids.  We've been trying to invite the kids over to play, bake cookies to share with them or be sure to stop and talk to them when they are out.

Delivering sweets to the neighbors.

We also started Olive's school year off on a good note.  We wrote handwritten notes to her teacher and preschool director thanking them for teaching Olive this year.  We baked sugar cookies and delivered them to the ladies during their open house.  They were so appreciative.  We love to make and it made us feel good to let them know they were appreciated.

I just picked up those orange containers in the first picture and a pack of glittery thank you notes all from The Dollar Tree.  They worked great together.  They were cute and perfectly practical.  I wrote a note to each of the ladies and Olive added her own, colorful message at the top of each card.

Tip: My kids love to help me bake.  They want to be really hands on which is fine if we're just baking for us, but not so great if you're baking for other people.  I've learned that if I'm baking treats for other people, I will give them each their own ball of dough to make cookies with.  I'll take care of the dough for other people.  They still get to help and bake with me, but their cute kid germs just stay on their cookies.  Works out great!

Kevin's been joining us in doing nice things for his grad students, the students who run his research lab and coworkers.  So far, we hosted all the grad students for Back to School Burgers one night.  They just had to show up and we provided dinner and dessert.  He also emailed his team and took their Starbucks order for an early morning meeting. 

I'd love to fix dinner for a friend,
have friends over for dinner,
send a care package,
continue to send in little notes and treats for Olive's teachers,
get to know our neighbors better
and find more fun ways to show people we care this Fall.

Do you have any suggestions of things to do with kids to spread kindness??