Happy Mother's Day

 Maybe you've been waiting to see what I'd do with those little woven hearts I made.  Mother's Day seemed like a good time to start my outdoor display this year.

I'm hoping it brings people smiles.  And that plenty of people leave hearts here for others.  Unlike my kindness rocks last year, I will not be making close to 500 hearts this year.  When I'm tired of making them, the display will be done.

Rocks...and more

 In 2023 & 2024 I had Sssid, the Rock Snake outside my home.  Sssid encouraged people to paint rocks and place them along the sidewalk.

People definitely participated.  If I recall correctly, I had something over 100 rocks placed each year.  Some clearly painted by little kids, some truly mini works of art.

I wanted to do something different last year, so I created kindness rocks.  (Truth be told, I'd been painting and distributing small numbers of kindess rocks throughout my neighborhood for over a year by this time.)

I clearly had NO IDEA when I started what this would grow into.  By the time I stopped in September, I had distributed almost 600 rocks!!  99% of those were rocks I had painted.  I had to first find rocks of the appropriate size, rocks that relatively smooth on at least one size so they could be written on.  Then I painted all the rocks, on both sides, with a lavender outdoor paint I had, and then I could write on them.  On one side (what I considered the back) of every rock I had written Kindess rocks!  On the other I'd written various little sayings encouraging people to be kind.  

This year I did not want to do the same thing, although I do want to send a similar message.  IMHO the world really needs people who consciously put kindness and caring into the world.  Every day.  In both large and small ways, but probably focusing mainly on 1-1 interactions.  So I have a concept that I'm working on.

Have a heart.  

I haven't yet worked out exactly what my sign will say.  Something on the order of "Find a heart, make a heart, have a heart."  But I am most assuredly NOT making many hundreds of hearts.  These little woven hearts are the start.  I intend to walk along the beach - when we actually have some decent weather - and hope to find vaguely heart-shaped rocks.  I plan to get some polymer clay and make and bake some hearts.  I hope I can find some natural items (pine cones?  acorn caps?  other things I haven't yet thought of) that I can use a dab of hot glue to stick together in roughly heart shapes.  Leaves or flowers would be great, but they will blow away too easily.  

I want part of the message to absolutely be for others to find and/or make hearts and leave them here to share with others.  I'd kind of hate my sign to say something like 'please take only one' (I know for a fact that plenty of people took more than one rock last year), but I don't know what the best words are yet.  I'd love your suggestions.