Monday, February 4, 2013

30for30!

For those of you that don't know, I turned 30 this weekend (GASP!) and had an absolute blast doing it! I decided back in December I wanted to do something really awesome to commemorate this event and really couldn't come up with anything. I had always thought about going to Vegas, however, it was Super Bowl weekend and airfare to the gambling capital of the U.S. was pretty pricy. I would have paid it to celebrate, but I definitely did not want to ask someone else to spend a ton of money just for my birthday- and who wants to go to Vegas alone right?

Like I said, this was in December and right around the time we started hearing a lot about people doing good deeds for random strangers. For example, paying for the person in line behind you at the drive-thru or something similar to that. This gave me an idea about doing some random acts of kindness for my birthday. I then remembered one of my fav celeb activists Sophia Bush used her 30th birthday last summer to do a project raising money to fund a school in another country. She called it the 30for30 project and raised $30,000 for her 30th to build that school. (well she actually had so many donation contributed to her fund that she raised $60k and built 2 schools!) Anyway, I decided to make my own 30for30 project. Let's be real, I don't have quite the following that a celebrity has so I opted to continue in the random acts of kindness direction and just make it a total of 30. And with that my 30for30 project was born. Over the month of January I compiled a list of things I wanted to get done, and with the help of my family and friends, I was able to come up with 30 things. I wanted to keep it local, to help the community here rather than venturing out, this proved rather difficult when coming up with 30 things, but by the end of January I had my list. Part of the mission was the complete all 30 random acts of kindness within that one day, 30 acts for 30 years. This meant the entire week before I was a busy bee getting things ready and then Friday night finalizing to make sure I had everything and the list was mapped out.

So, here are the 30 random acts of kindness! 

1. leave thank you note and candy bar in mailbox
2. deliver donuts to the police station
3. pay for the next person in line (we did this at a drive-thru)
4. recycle plastic bottles at the city recylcing center (next to the dump)
5. give donuts to the lady in the weigh shack at the dump (she sits out there all alone, so boring!)
6. leave money prepaid at a gas pump
7. tape money to vending machine
8. tape money to soda machine
9. recycle newspapers at the Try2Recycle by campus
10. took dog food to Rita B. Huff (the animal shelter)
11. a cookie package to University Police (Thanks for this one Mandy!!)
12. took dog food to an animal rescue shelter out of a home in Point Blank - they have 42 rescue dogs at their house! They are at Tractor Supply the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month if you're interested in adopting.
13. a cookie package to a neighbor
14. a cookie package to EMS
15. a cookie package to the fire station
16. a cookie package to the sheriff's office
17. crayons/coloring books to the hospital
18. a cookie package for the nurses at the hospital
19. homemade flower bouquets in mason jars to the hospital
20. valentine's cards for a nursing home
21. a cookie package for the nurses/staff at the nursing home
22. made a monetary donation at the SAAFE House resale shop (they dont accept regular donations on Saturdays)
23. donated clothes to the C.O.M.E. Center
24. dropped food off at the Mission
25. returned shopping carts at Kroger (I thought this one might be pushing it, but they were actually out of carts and several ladies were waiting for them when I brought them in!)
26. a Starbucks gift card to a random person (gave it to the hospital receptionist, she was very sweet!)
27. left quarters at a laundry mat, tapped to a washing machine
28. donated diapers/wipes to a church that has a daycare program
29. took pizza to the State Park for the guard shack employees. (there was a HUGE race going on they were swamped and loved the pizza)
30. delivered school supplies to an elementary school teacher for her classroom and/or to share with other teachers.

I am so glad I decided to do this, maybe it'll become a tradition.. although coming up with more things could prove a little difficult. I could start the list now I guess! I had grand intentions of taking a ton of pictures but the day flew by and with getting everything to each place, I just plum forgot!
Here are a few that we managed to snap:


The cookie packages all ready to go in the car!


Flowers from the grocery store to make the arrangements Friday night. 


My parent's living room filled with SOME of the stuff for Saturday. 


Getting ready to take the flowers, cookies, and crayons/coloring books (Isabel had those) to the hospital! 

The vending machine with some change taped to it, for a yummy snack! 
 
My totally awesome friend Isabel came along for the ride and to help. I most definitely could not have done it without her, so thank you so much Isabel!! Also, a HUGE thank you to my wonderful mama for slaving away and baking 17 dozen cookies on Friday. I seriously used all the cookies, I didn't even eat ONE! Y'all Rock!

Hope y'all had a fabulous weekend and are feeling a little inspired to help out in your community, even if it's just a little. Think about all the good we could do if everyone did one random act of kindness a day!

xoxo,
kris

 

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