My 40th birthday is coming up at the end of May!  Hard to believe it’s so close, but ready or not, we’re all getting older!!

I saw this idea a few years back and fell in love with it!  To celebrate my birthday this year, our goal as a family is to do 40 acts of kindness.  Some may be big and some will be really little, but 40 nice things for different people.  Some will be random and others will be for people we know.

We’re going to keep track of them on the wall of our house and see if in the month of May we can get all 40 done!

In addition to our 40 acts, I am hoping to record 40 more acts of kindness from some of you reading this.  Would you commit to do one (or more) acts of kindness in the month of May?  And then tell me about them or post them on my Facebook wall?  We’ll keep track of our 40 and then hopefully an additional 40.  That would be 80 people who would be touched by our joint effort!!  How cool would that be!

Some of them cost nothing, like holding the door open for someone and others take a little more saving up, like buying someone dinner or their groceries.

Here are some ideas to get your juices flowing…

-Write a thank you note to your postal worker

-Give treats to a neighbor

-Leave dollars around the Dollar Tree

-Leave a bag of microwave popcorn taped to the Redbox machine

-Write a letter to a soldier

-Write a letter to a grandparent

-Pick up the phone (the actual phone) and make a phone call!

-Send flowers to a friend

-Buy gifts for the Humane Society

-Clean up trash at a park or school

-Give someone a compliment

-Visit a Senior Center

-Help at a Food Bank

-Take food donations to the Food Bank

-Take coffee to the office staff at your Doctor, your Work, your Dentist, your Kid’s School

-Write a nice letter to a friend

-Pay for someone’s gas

-Pay for someone’s coffee

-Buy a stranger’s dinner

-Pay for someone’s groceries at the store

-Hold the door open for someone

-Smile at a stranger

-Hand out blessing bags or buy a coffee for someone you see on the street

-Buy gifts and take them to Children’s Hospital

-Donate to world vision

-Take dinner to a friend

-Babysit for a mom would could use a break

-Take treats for the staff room at your kid’s school

-Support a fundraiser

-Drop quarters on the ground so someone else can pick them up

-Tape quarters to a gumball machine

-Send someone a book from Amazon

-Send a postcard to someone

-Leave a gift basket for a neighbor kid

-Write thank you cards and treats to take to the police department or fire department

-Donate some of your stuff

-Invite someone over for dinner

-Buy $5 gift cards and give them out to a few people

-Let someone merge in traffic

-Wash someone’s car

-Clean someone’s house

-Mow someone’s lawn

-Pay for someone’s layaway at a store

-Make a bird feeder and put it outside of your house

-Walk some dogs at the humane society

-Listen when someone really needs to talk

The ideas really are endless!!

“Be the reason someone smiles today!”