Life. We rarely celebrate it. Oh sure, we celebrate birthdays and we celebrate some holidays but the day-to-day life?  The day-to-day when life is actually lived ?  We don’t celebrate that very often.  We allow the mundane to overshadow our days, weeks, months, and before we know it years. No wonder we drag ourselves in and out of daily responsibilities without a whole lot of “bright side” perspective. Last spring I happened to see from my Facebook feed that it was National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. I thought to myself, “That NEEDS to be celebrated!” I’m a “from scratch” baker but the work day was already well under way by the time this came on my radar so I went to the store at lunch, bought chocolate chip cookies and handed them out at work. It’s true that anytime there is free food at my workplace the masses descend but what happened this day was a light bulb moment for me. Almost everyone hit the kitchen at the same time and I stood back and watched faces light up, taste buds en

To have a gratitude attitude is a gift; to get a gratitude attitude can be a challenge.  Sometimes it is easy, the gratefulness presents itself so clearly.  Other times you have to search for it.  I'm reminded of the verse in Isaiah that says there is treasure to be found in the darkness.  Sometimes gratefulness feels like that, hidden in the dark. For years I have said that I was grateful to God for the life he had given me but I meant the big things.  You know, the breathing, the heartbeat, things like that.  What I was missing in keeping a gratitude attitude was the key ingredient.  The seemingly mundane, the day in and day out that made up life.  To focus in on those ordinary things, oftentimes invisible to the naked eye and heart, builds a foundation of gratitude. Once we have a foundation of gratitude we start looking at life and living life a bit differently. We want other people to have gratitude attitudes and be filled the way we are.  We want other people to see the

{There's a preface to this story, click here to read it.} Wednesday, August 27 was my 40th birthday, the start of a new year and a new decade. Over the past few months I made a list of 40 specific random acts of kindness I wanted to do on my birthday. But let's be realistic - I couldn't do all 40 in one 24 hour period. I'm 40 now and worn out! I need to sleep! :)   --------> see? I had barely started and needed a nap! ha! So I started my random acts the afternoon of Tuesday, August 26.  I took as many pictures as I could of each act of kindness simply because I am always inspired by visuals.  (If you click on the picture it will enlarge for you)  Perhaps you will be as well? What's just ONE random act of kindness you could do this week? To pull off 40 acts of random kindness in a day and a half (and then some) you have to do some prep work. You can't just wake up one day and it happens.  About six months before my birthday I started making lists. Li