Write an encouraging note to someone once a week

My life got away from me this month. I was substitute teaching almost all month and didn’t even get VALENTINES out to my daughters! I always do that. Even when they were little and lived here, I sent them large pink or red envelopes full of extravagant nonsense just because of l♥ve. Well, last year they told me that they always like my packages, but they really wanted valentines from boys, so I may really be off the hook for this until they are married.

In other news, I now have eleven notes to write to people I don’t know. Eleven. That’s a lot, but I got it done in one day and decorated the envelopes all cute, so these people who leave themselves out don’t have to feel left out.

That’s about it, I think, but I have been encouraging people in other ways. I went and visited a lonely friend today for an hour and a half. I have been taking dinner to a little pregnant couple every Wednesday and will continue to do so until their baby (and thusly a grandma or two) arrives.

So even though I haven’t sat down to write a lot of notes this month, I’m really doing ok in the supportive friend role. :)

i will send letter to each of my girl friends.

I’ve not been very diligent about posting this when I do it, so maybe having this as a “goal” is more pointless than it seems.

In December, I sent out about 40 Christmas cards and ran out of time before I got the neighbors’ hand-delivered. I also wrote 7 letters to people on pretty black and white stationery that I decorated with red and green accents.

This month, I have gotten 6 or 7 Christmas cards with the 2008 letters in them, so I’m thinking it might not be too late after all to send out my remaining cards. I have written the 7 notes that I do every month and they are ready to be mailed.

I put this goal up to remind me to write to my friends, my sister, my daughters, and my mom, even though I talk to all of them regularly. I should probably either use this for the purpose it was intended or take it off my list.

We’ll see how this month goes.

She moved far away and I hardly ever get to see her or talk to her. I don’t even have her email address. I do have her home address, though, and her birthday was in October, so I wrote her a nice letter.

I wrote some other notes, too, and decorated all the envelopes with cute Fall patterns across the bottom. I also designed a really cool postcard so I can send Anonymous NiceNotes.

October was pretty productive during the slow bits at the Corn Maze!

In the almost month since I last posted here, I’ve written six notes. None of them were to my sister. I think she will have to be next.

Update: My sister called the middle of October to say she was coming for a visit and she stayed overnight at my house. I have since sent her 5th child a birthday card and talked to her twice on the phone.

There are some people who have been kind of MIA for a while, and I thought they would enjoy some contact, so I wrote each of them a nice little note on some really cute stationery, and finished each note off by drawing matching designs around their names on the envelopes.

Hopefully, they will smile to know that someone cared enough to add the little extras.

I send notes all the time. I don’t know why I haven’t been writing anything about this since April.

Anyway, today I’m sending a note and decided to draw a border around it. I think it’s cute. :)

. . . but it totally counts!

I posted about giving books to the kids in my Intervention groups here but I think the book labels I made for them fit in this category, too. Each one had the child’s name on it in bold pretty letters and announced to the world what excellent progress they had made in reading.

They couldn’t wait to get back to their regular classrooms to show their teachers their new books and now there are 17 very encouraged little kids at my school!

Not the most aged person I know, but the one I have known the longest. We met in the bell line the first day of 7th grade. We were both trying to fix our new shoes because they hurt our feet … already… and it was only 8:00 in the morning.

Anyway, we hit it off immediately and have been friends for #% years. We were the honor attendants at one another’s weddings, which was what prompted the letter. I just celebrated 25 years of marriage. I got married a year after she did, just a little earlier in April, so I knew she would be having an anniversary soon.

It was just a “catch up” letter. We haven’t really had a good chance to talk in almost a year. Her little sister talks to both of us and keeps us up to date, but it was high time I sent her something from ME, and not just saying hi through her sister.

She has been having a hard time with her 12-year-old (a mind-blowingly horrifying discovery type of hard time).

She called and unloaded on me a few weeks ago and I haven’t heard from her since. Maybe she was embarrassed that she told me, I don’t know, but I sent her a nice long email a few days ago, just catching her up on my life and asking about several positive aspects of hers.

I have been waiting to hear back because I asked what her kids wanted for their birthdays and thought that would get a response. Well, she finally did call me today and sounded much better than the last time I heard her voice. She asked lots of questions about the things I had written, so I could tell that the email had given her a lift.