Basket of Sunshine {with Printable}

Is anyone else ready for Spring yet?

ME! ME!

I actually don't mind Winter. However, here in Idaho Winter comes early, hits hard, and lingers. So about the middle of February I start longing for Spring. In fact, in these here parts of the woods if we have a day in the low 40's we leave our coats at home and some even brave a pair of shorts (mostly adolescent boys).

So yes, I am ready for some sunshine and Spring.

Speaking of sunshine, today I have this fun and easy Basket of Sunshine idea for you and there is a free printable.

We used this basket of sunshine as an act of service. We had a person in our neighborhood who was going through a tough trial. We wanted to let him know we were thinking of him. So we went to the store and gathered up a cartload of yellow things.

Some of the things we chose:

-box of Golden Grahams cereal
-snack size bag of Golden Oreos
-Lay's in a canister
-bottles of Fanta pineapple soda
-bags of microwave popcorn
-small bag of Peanut M&M's
-Lemonheads

I spray-painted an old crate we had bright and sunny yellow. Once it was good and dry, we loaded up the crate with our sunshine goodies. I tied a bit of fabric around it and attached the Sunshine tag.

Save the image of the tag to your computer and then you can print it off in the size you need.

This really is a fun way to brighten someone's day and to get out there and offer a bit of service. My kids really became invested in this little service project. I love service like that. Plus you guys know how much I love myself some color coordination. 

Christmas Thank You for the Garbage Man

This Christmas we are trying to think of more opportunities to show kindness to those around us. We are trying to think of who we can thank or serve. It is our Christmas of Kindness.

This week we decided to serve our Garbage Men. They work super hard. They work in the cold, the heat, and here, in the WIND. They heft our garbage filled cans. They heft our grass filled cans.

Basically, they are amazing.

To thank them we put together these gift bags.

First I went to my ever faithful PicMonkey and made this graphic for our Christmas Thank you to our Garbage Men. How stinking adorable is that abominable snowman? I just adore PicMonkey's Christmas overlays.

I printed off the graphic onto brown paper lunch sacks. You can find my tutorial on how to print on a lunch sack HERE. You can also just print this off on a piece of paper and make a tag.

Since I have an obsession with matching colors, Crunch bars were a must.

I also had some blue striped washi tape sitting around.

Another fun feature to this Christmas thank you, was the batting I used inside to mimic snow. The purpose was double fold. The batting also helped the bag stay upright.

Hopefully we make the day of some Garbage Men.

We have a couple more Christmas Service ideas in our Christmas of Kindness 2014 and I am excited to share them with you.

Follow along with Just Another Day in Paradise

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Fun with the Kids Friday: Leprechaun Clover Attack

Today is Friday. Yippee.

I love Fridays. They mark the end of a week. The beginning of a weekend. The start of extended time with my sweet little family. Friday night is family movie night. We love Fridays.

Here on the blog we love Fridays because it is time for Fun with Kids Fridays.

We had really fun this week with our fun activity.

This week my Little Men were Little Leprechauns since St. Patrick's Day is so close.

We clover attacked our most favorite person. We wanted him to know just how lucky we feel to have him.

We printed and cut out these four leaf clovers that I made in PicMonkey.

We gathered up our clovers and sneaked over to Dad's work.

While Hunky Hubby was nestled in his office hard at work, our busy Little Leprechauns were hard at work themselves.

We taped our lucky clovers all over the inside of Hubby's car.

We enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.

The boys had fun and hubby really enjoyed his surprise, which made the whole experience even better.

Who do you feel lucky to have in your life? Want your Little Leprechauns to throw their own clover attack?

Just download the Leprechaun Clover Attack Tags HERE. Print them out, cut them and tape them up. Make someone's day.

Thanks for stopping by!

Have a wonderful Friday.

Linking up:
Craft O Maniac
CRAFT
The Girl Creative
Lolly Jane
Sugar Bee Crafts
Lil'Luna
High Heels and Grills

Project No More "I'm Bored!": Serve It Up

Today for Project No More "I'm Bored!" it is all about bringing a little service into the kiddos lives.

I have been wanting to do a much better job at providing opportunities for my Little Men to serve others. I have a whole slew of ideas. They just keep coming. I have even asked the boys for some ideas of what they would like to do to serve others. While driving from our latest service project, Oldest actually blurted out that we should find our local orphanage and we should give them all candy.

So sweet. I had to explain to him that there weren't any orphanages around here. We decided to keep brainstorming.

 For our latest service project we headed to the hospital.

Originally our plan was to package up a couple of dollars of change, attach a note, and then leave them in the nurses' break room. We thought it would be fun to leave one or two of them a surprise to get a treat.

The note said,

thanks for 

CHANGING

lives

have a treat

on us

We made our way into the hospital, including a little confusion in the automatic rotating doors. Yeah, traveling through those suckers with two rowdy olders, one punch-drunk 3 year old, and a Momma maneuvering a baby carrier was a sight to behold. There were several chuckles around us.


We stopped at the front desk. She was immediately enamored with my Little Men, but was at a loss as to how to help us follow through with our service project. She led us to the volunteer coordinator.

Ms. Volunteer Coordinator too was enamored with my Little Men. She thought they were so sweet to come and bring some change to the nurses. BUT, she also was at a loss as to what to do. She wasn't even sure where the break rooms were or if she could take us there. So she went to get another person.

That person, the community resource person, was super friendly too. She talked to the boys about what a great thing they were doing and she complimented them on their service project. She told them about all that a nurse or doctor could buy with the change.

She was so nice to them. I really appreciated all the effort these ladies went to for my boys. My boys didn't end up being able to put the change in a break room themselves, but thanks to these ladies they were able to realize what their little act of service would do for some hard-working nurses.

Over all it was a great trip.

I thought I would share with you how we made our thank you's, including the card that I made to go with the change.

First I printed of my card after putting it in Word. It measured about 3 1/2" wide. I got two cards per sheet. Then I cut them out and folded them in half.

I bought some teeny tiny cellophane snack bags in the wedding section of The Mart. I put $2.00 of change in each little baggie.

Then I folded over the top of the bag and sandwiched it between the card and stapled it in place.

Like I said, our plan was to leave them in a break room. You could also tape them to a vending machine. You could leave them for a baseball coach. The possibilities are endless.

Here is the card I made. You just need to save it as a picture onto your computer and then put it in Word (or similar program) to print off.

Load up your little do-gooders and bring some smiles to others.

I am realizing there are so many ways to serve.

Serving can be as simple as weeding for a neighbor in need of a little extra help.

Serving has got to be one of the best boredom busters because it teaches such a valuable lesson.

Even if one of the lessons is simply learning to serve with a good attitude.

Little might still be learning this...hahaha...

He will get it though.

Do you do service with your kiddos? What are some of your favorite ways to serve. I would LOVE ideas, because we are going to keep doing service projects all Summer.