Simple living: thankfulness frame.

I've seen the blog posts circulating about how excessive Pinterest-surfing is causing moms to ignore their kids because they're too busy pinning at every spare minute.  And I get that, as I have to be careful not to retreat to my computer instead of engaging with the people in my home.  Anything can be taken overboard and abused.  Personally though, I have to say that many of the simple, creative ideas I've seen on Pinterest have actually helped me engage with the people in my life more.   This project is one of them.

First, I saw this idea on Pinterest, and then a sweet friend gave me a cute gift wrapped in burlap, and I thought I could repurpose it for this simple project. Who doesn't love burlap?  I wrote on a 5x7 frame with a white paint pen, framed the burlap, and in literally less than 5 minutes and $0 spent, I had this:

The idea for this frame, which is now perched on the dresser in our bedroom, is that my husband and I would use it to write notes back and forth to each other in the form of thankfulness. The notes are written with a dry-erase marker and easily wiped off.

Practicing thankfulness is one of the most important things we can do every single day.  For me, taking a moment to write or speak thankfulness is the difference between spiraling into a sea of chaos, resentfulness, and entitlement vs. peacefully surrendering my life and seeing the multitude of gifts I already have.  Yet, it's something I easily forget.  Every single day.

Writing on the thankfulness frame encourages me to search for something to be thankful for, even when I don't feel it at that moment.  And a bonus is receiving encouragement by what my husband writes.  The other morning after he had left for work, I found this:

Sigh.  I do love that man.  He knows me, he sees what's important in life, and he'll take two seconds to write on a picture frame to put a smile on his wife's face.  I've always wanted our home to be a place of beauty and peace, and it made me happy - and thankful - to know he sees it that way too.

So, I encourage you to make a thankfulness frame - for yourself or even as a simple gift for a friend.  We can all use a little more thankfulness in our lives, can't we?