Make Gratitude Contagious. Give thanks with a note.
It’s time to give thanks! I am a bit of a foodie so I love a holiday that involves a big meal. My big and crazy family joins together and my parents have a Battle of the Turkeys. Mom makes the house smell delicious with her oven-roasted turkey and my dad stays cool by the grill. My father the self-proclaimed “Worlds Best Cook” always thinks he wins, but truthfully there is nothing quite like the smell of a turkey roasting in the house, so Mom gets my vote every year.
After hours of snacking…. I mean helping in the kitchen, we sit down for the meal. The food is amazing, but as we have all grown up and moved away it is the conversation that is most enjoyed. As early as I can remember my parents have had an odd, but memorable tradition of setting out three kernels of corn to represent three things we are thankful for. At the end of Thanksgiving dinner all five kids and our parents took a turn sharing his or her three reasons to be thankful. There is a lot of laughing and sometimes even a few tears, but it is a tradition that I will be forever grateful for. Gratitude is a gift.
To celebrate Thanksgiving and the gift of gratitude we will be doing a series of blog posts about giving thanks. We would love your ideas and request. Showing gratitude through a handwritten note shows more than just etiquette. It is good for our souls.
Honestly one of the reasons that I love working in the letterpress printing industry is that it isn’t one of instant gratification. Each piece that we make starts off as an artistic concept and is brought to life through a series of processes. Even our very basic pieces are a labor of love.
Secret time: I have saved every single card that I have ever received. We are talking hundreds and hundreds of hand written cards…I think I might be a stationery hoarder. Either way, those words of encouragement, thanks or just thinking of you mean more to me than anything else in my home. I have read them all many times and each time I am thankful for my insane stationery pile and for the kind people who wrote me those notes.
I know I can’t be the only crazy person who has this kind of love affair with handwritten notes. This post is for you my fellow note writer. Join us this month in giving thanks! I am going to challenge myself to write one handwritten letterpress printed thank you note once a week until the end of 2014. Sounds easy enough, but with the holidays coming up I need accountability. Keep me accountable by sharing your kernels of thankfulness. Share it with your friends or write us note and we will share it with our friends! Let’s make gratitude contagious.
With thanks,
Dinglewood Design and Press
PS – If you need some letterpress printed stationery to write notes of gratitude email me today at info@dinglewooddesign.com!
