Week One of Advent - Giving Quest

I took this picture today after church - I love my happy kids!!!

Last night, we began to get out our Christmas decorations - they all had fun helping me decorate and playing with everything!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we are planning an Advent season full of giving. We have been printing labels and cutting today, thanks to Colby and Abigail. Tomorrow, my mom is coming over and together with my kids we are going to put together some of the things we will be giving away.

Our first Random Act of Kindness is planned for this coming Tuesday afternoon. Tomorrow, we are going to put quarters on the four corners of the card below.

Then, on Tuesday, we will take these cards to a local laundrymat or two and hand them out to people there. I hope there's going to be lots of people washing their clothes after the Thanksgiving break so each of my kids can bless at least one person! I know $1 will not even pay for a load to be washed or dried, but hopefully it WILL bless that person's day & my child's heart in giving something away.

Here's a few other projects we will be assembling tomorrow:

We will be attaching the Christmas story printed below to M&M candy wrappers. I found this story through pintrest and it led me to this site.

We will also be attaching the Legend of the Candy Cane story below to candy canes. I found this cute printable thru pintrest too & it led me to this site.

We are going to hand out the M&Ms and the candy canes at nursing homes and the mall later this month.

I've planned two specific givings each week of Advent. I will be highlighting our plans here each week. I also have a list of other things we can do during the week, depending on where we are. I will have the small cards to explain what we are doing in my purse so I can hand these out as we do something!

These things are:
Grocery Store - buy a gift card and hand it to the person checking out behind me.
Grocery Store - buy a package of gum & give it to the checkout clerk
Grocery Store - buy a coffee or hot chocolate & give it to the Salvation Army bell ringer when leaving the store
Restaurants - hand out coupons that I have or small gift cards before leaving restaurant
Restaurants - Leave a small gift for waiter/waitress
Drive-Thru Restaurant - pay for person behind me in line

Next week, I'll report back with our progress of this week & give the coming week's plan! I hope you will join us on this Advent Giving Quest! Let me know what you and your family have done or are planning on doing!!