38 Random Acts of Kindness

I celebrated my 38th birthday this week. It was a wonderful celebration. I wasn't planning on doing much for my birthday this year, but I found this idea on pinterest a few weeks back and decided to take the idea and make it my own.

There was a girl who decided to do 38 random acts of kindness for her 38th birthday. I thought that would be a wonderful way to celebrate my birthday. I designed an invite and a list of 38 random acts. I invited my girlfriends to pick a few acts to do together as a group. We gathered together Saturday morning and headed out for a few hours to begin our acts of kindness. After a few hours my family met up with me and we finished up the list through out the rest of the day. This way I was able to have a little girl time and spend the day with my family. I wanted my boys to see us serving and being nice to other people. I think that is an important thing to teach children so I want to start while they are young.

We completed 38 random acts of kindness although there were a few on the list that we weren't able to complete (although we tried), we found others ways to served that brought us to a total of 38+. It was a wonderful day and a great way to celebrate my birthday. I am thankful I have great friends who are willing to run around town with me serving others.

Here are some pictures of our day:

This was the invite that I designed. I also had the list of 38 acts that we were going to do printed out on card stock for each girl. Next to each act is a little heart to check off as we completed the act. The girls brought these home so they could see all the nice things we accomplished during our time together.

I made little sugar and spice jars for the girls as a thank you for coming and serving with me. You shake them up and sprinkle it over toast, in oatmeal or on fruit.

This is the back of the jar with the ingredients listed and usage instructions. I thought it was a good gift for the fall coming up.

Here we are at Lake Merritt passing out water bottles and home grown apples to the walkers and joggers going by. Rachel picked the water bottle act so she made cute little labels saying Share the Love - do an act of kindness in celebration of Corene's birthday. So cute, I loved that!

Here is Rachel tossing an apple to the jogger.

One of the acts that Cat picked was to drop coins at the park for little kids to find.

Look at this little boy showing his dad what he saw laying there on the playground.

How adorable is that. Cat made his day!

This girl pulled up behind us on Grand Ave. as we were loading up. We decided to pay her parking meter for her. We thought that would be better then adding to someone elses meter not knowing if they needed the extra time or not. She was pretty excited about that, we put 2 hours in for her which was several dollars.

Here we are at IKEA/Bay St. Here we were writing notes to put in our favorite books at Barnes and Noble for the readers to find.

Here is Elise snacking on some 7 layer dip. I made individual 7 layer dips in mason jars along with my favorite pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (with maple frosting) for us all to eat while writing our notes.


Here we are taping notes and coins onto the vending machine. I really like this one as well. Rachel picked it and she had paper saying - Dear Vending Machine User.... and then we filled in a nice little note. It was cute. We taped several notes up.

Can you see our note taped onto the machine. It is in the middle of the diet Coke and the Coke Zero.

Here we returned a bunch of IKEA shopping carts to the store. We also left happy notes on car windows in the parking lot of IKEA.

Our last stop with the girls was to the local fire station to drop off thank you notes and homemade cookies. I knew my boys would love this one so my family met up with us to do this one. They loved seeing the firemen and the firemeh appreciated our cookies.

This act was my favorite. Here is my big boy giving a ballon to a boy at the park. This wasn't the boy crying (see story below) but his face did light up with a smile as we handed him the balloon.

My family and I headed over to Telegraph Street in Berkeley (my old stomping grounds). I figured this would be a great place to serve. Here my boys are giving the musicians some money in their guitar case.

Here we are having my favorite pizza in the world - Fat Slice. We bought a slice to give away. We found a homeless man who was literally digging through the trash and pulling out a to go cup of soup as we offered him a slice of pizza and a soda. He took the pizza and gave up the soup cup.

Here the boys bought an ice cream sandwich for a kid at Cream. They also got to enjoy an ice cream sandwich themselves.

I think my most favorite act of the day was when my boys and I went to "moon park" (which is there favorite park) and they passed out balloons to the kids. My boys were pretty excited to buy some balloons at the store and they picked out the colors. They didn't really want to give them away at the park but they did a good job. The first boy we gave it to didn't really care too much about it. His mom took the balloon for him but then as we were walking away he said he wanted a different color. It was the next boy who was the best. He ran under the slide and was crying. Athen walked over there and offered his balloon. The mother said oh it is okay he is fine his sister just pushed him. We got a little closer to him and I said "are you sure you don't want a balloon, we are giving them out for free" he shook his head yes, stopped crying and got a big smile on his face. It was the most precious thing ever. I almost started crying. We made this little boy so happy. The next few boys were the same, they got hug smiles on their face and looked over at their parents like they had hit the jack pot.

The next favorite moment of the day was when I was sitting in the car parked on the side of the road in Berkeley feeding my sweet baby Sutton while Rick was walking around with the boys. After I finished feeding her I was holding her and looking at her and she just stared up in to my eyes and gave me the biggest most precious smile. It melted my heart. It crossed my mind that the best and most important service I can give is to my sweet little baby Sutton through out her life. It was a precious moment with my baby.