You guys!  I did it!  This is the final blog series of the year.  For any new friends, this year Iâve been devoting one week a month to a themed blog series with daily blog posts.  Iâve talked all about project life, shared some âwish someone told me soonerâ parenting advice, written about ways to preserve your memories/photos, revealed our favorite things in West Seattle, taught a few easy photo editing tips, celebrated my third birthday, shared ideas for documenting childhood, revealed my favorite apps, given ideas for fun ways to use your photos, dished about my familyâs favorite recipes, and created some fun DIY photo gift ideas, and now I’m sharing my family’s favorite Christmas traditions!
In 2015, I challenged myself to do one random act of kindness each week. It wasn’t always easy, but it was enormously satisfying.  At the end of the year, I was enjoying the random acts so much that I created an advent calendar for my family using my favorite random acts of kindness from the year.
random acts of kindness advent calendar
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There are lots of random acts of kindness lists on the internet, even others organized as an advent calendar.  Except I have one tiny pet peeve with (most of) them:  theyâre filled with things like âhold the door open for someoneâ, âsmile at a strangerâ, âlet someone in a hurry go ahead of you in line.’  Iâm sorry.  Letâs get real.  These should be accepted as baseline standards for considerate social behavior, yes?  Can we agree on that?  Ok, thanks.  While the cards in my calendar do range in effort from super easy to requiring a little more planning/thought, I hope youâll find it a wonderful challenge that pushes you beyond the typical day-to-day pleasantries.
how to make your random acts of kindness advent calendar
1.  Download and print the free random acts of kindness advent calendar! (see below)
2. Â Cut on the black lines. Â Fold on the gray lines.
3.  Display in any manner you like.  Above I used mini clothes pins to hang from an old frame. Below I used washi tape to adhere to the wall.  You could also put the cards in envelopes and leave one under your childâs pillow each night to help get them more excited about the activity (if you ask me, that’s better than that silly Elf on the Shelf, but I digress…)
Note:  Thereâs disagreement on whether an advent calendar should be a countdown to Christmas (going from 25 to 1) or a true âcalendarâ matching the dates (going from 1 to 25).  I designed this to match December dates, but you can do whatever works for your family.
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I know itâs such a crazy busy time of the year, but I promise the effort you put into this challenge will be incredibly rewarding.  I hope youâll be inspired to start this tradition of kindness with your family and make it a priority for this year (not just another thing you pin for later)… even though the month is already under way, you can still start TODAY and spread PLENTY of kindness!
Want more random acts of kindness ideas? I shared some last year in this post and this post!
More Christmas traditions are coming all week long! Â If youâd like to receive a summary in your email inbox at the end of the week, enter your email address here!
