guerilla acts of kindness

So I haven't been blogging much lately, but let me explain my absence friends. Firstly I spent a lot of time working on my guest post for Frosting for the Cause - with the post going live tomorrow, I'm actually a little nervous. You should definitely check it out though, if only to laugh at my terrible spelling!

Also, we finally found a new home. After weeks and months of viewing what may or may not have formerly been crack dens, weighing up leaving Crystal Palace where I feel like home for the first time in my life and the desperate need for little Vin to have his own bedroom (hello kiddo design blogs!) we finally found somewhere. And my boy has his own room to sleep in. And it's still in CP, in fact it's closer to town than we are now. So the frantic packing, decluttering and life audit process commences. It has given me lots of post ideas though, so stick around in the next week or so for some great housewarming gift ideas!

And you know, in between all the life clutter, I have been off like a crazed hippy, doing good deeds where I can.

Like these bunches of chrysanthemums and daffodils I trimmed down and rearranged in jam jars to leave on my neighbour's doorsteps. I have to say guerilla acts of kindness are a strange kind of thrill, inconspicuously scouting the perfect drop spot, the fear of being caught, wondering what you claim as your motive when you get noticed. I'm hooked on niceness.



a nicer place...

I had a long conversation with one of my doctors the other day. It started about work stuff, he was complaining about the long hours and the bad pay, and somewhere along the line we were talking about our goals, what drives you, what keeps you going through a hundred hour week. He told me he wanted to be a surgeon because he wanted to make people feel better, whether that was cutting someone open to take something out or put something in or sitting up with a relative through the night, reassuring, soothing and making them feel better.

And it got me thinking, what is it that drives me? If I had to sum it up in one line, what would that line be? And I thought about it a long time, and I decided, if I don't achieve anything in this world, I want to make it a nicer place.

And I'm no surgeon or scientist or philanthropist, all I know is small pleasures, sweet treats, kind words. So I set out today to make the world a nicer place. I left compliments on napkins in chain store coffee shops, I wrote messages to my honey when he looks in the mirror, I left chocolate bars on park benches. I put together a little cupcake kit of paper cases, sprinkles and my fail-safe cupcake recipe and left it to be found at a busstop. I had a loyalty card full of stamps redeemable against an extra large coffee that I stuck to my neighbour's front door.

I know that they're only small gestures, but I am all about the small pleasures (and I hope that talking about it here hasn't cheapened these good deeds). But most of all, I hope that I made those tiny bits of the world a nicer place.