Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

Here’s an unique idea for building your relationship:

Make a homemade card with a picture of the two of you on the cover. Get ideas for a verse by spending a few minutes browsing through a card shop.

By spending the time to get a picture and make it personal, it will mean so much more than if you just go buy one.  Of course that means that you’ll have to get a picture of the two of you and that can be hard enough as it is!

And now, the five steps:

1. First you have to come up with an excuse to have a picture with the two of you in it– can you be that sneaky?  It can be in a plain setting, it can be when you go out to eat.  You just have to find some way that you can get the photo that you want.  (Perhaps sneak it in during those family photos you’ve been asking him to take for months?)
2. Next, get out some construction paper, card stock or some kind of decorative paper.  It doesn’t need to be anything to glamorous, just something with a little contrast.  No, plain white computer paper won’t do– though the alternating green and  white could do for a computer geek!
3. Third, find something to write on the inside.  For this, you could find the verse in a card store like the suggestion says.  You may also be able to create your own little poem.  Lastly, you could just write out something from your heart– which would probably mean the most to the other person.
4. Decorate your card.  Cut the picture in some way.  You can be creative, or cut an oval, but just don’t leave it in the same rectangle you got from the printer/developer.  Then find some colors or layers to make it look nice.  On the inside, write your note from #3 and sign it at the bottom.
5. Put some perfume on it.  NOT TOO MUCH.  Just a little will do.  I believe that in college the girls used to spray some in the air and wave the letter into the spray.  That’ll work just fine.  Because once you seal it up it will hold the sent for a good period of time.

There.  Now all you have to do is place it in a location that he/she will find it and it won’t be discovered or opened by someone else– the unexpected visitor, child, etc.– and you have a great personal surprise for that one that you love.

Weekend Kindness was originally designed to help us be kind over the weekend through challenges that we would complete a la Thursday Thirteen.  However, it has occurred to me over the time that I’ve spent writing on marriage and family over at MInTheGap that what we could really use is a refocusing of our time on how to best serve each other in our marriage relationships and our families.

So, over the next few weeks you can expect a retooling over here at WK, with more emphasis on loving your spouse, challenges and suggestions of how to meet their needs and surprise them!

We’ll still give you something to try out this weekend, and we’ll still give you some suggestions on how to show your love to your family– and maybe to the general public– but we’ll definitely have a new focus, and more content as well as challenges that talk about families and family life.

Here’s to the beginning of a new adventure on WK.

Come one come all and add your submissions to the Standing in the Gap Carnival to be hosted here at Weekend Kindness on July 20, 2007.

That’s right, I’m hosting the Standing in the Gap carnival as a way to be kind and show kindness. Do you have someone that’s running a carnival and they need someone to host? Perhaps someone you know is running a carnival and they need submissions.

Carnivals are great ways to read posts from sources you don’t normally frequent on a topic of interest. It’s also a great time to get your posts seen by others.

So, get some submissions going, and submit them to the Standing in the Gap Carnival!