It's you I like

Don't get ahead of me here... I am not talking about a Thank You Card.  The obligatory note that your mother made you send out when you got a pair of sox from your Great Aunt Rose or that white card with the word Thanks scribbled across the front.

I am talking about real GRATITUDE and a Gratitude Card!!! Oprah Winfrey talks about the benefits of a Gratitude Journal.  I sell them, so don't get me wrong; there is a huge benefit of using a gratitude journal, I use them, and I know just how valuable the practice is ... but Gratitude Journals are about us... right?  We are thinking about ourselves, what we get from the action of writing down our gratitude.  We are hoping to make ourselves feel better and work better and be better.

But a Gratitude Card, what is that you ask?  A Gratitude Card is a card you send out for no other reason than you thought of a person today and you wanted to remind them you care. A gratitude card is about someone else.  It is about giving someone else a reason to smile.  No strings attached.  Not because they were kind to you but because you are nice to them.

The world changes when we think of others, and the world is a brighter and happier place when we take a moment to be grateful for the people in our lives.  The next time you are reminded of someone.  Take a moment and send them a Gratitude Card :-)

The Swing by Auguste Renoir

 Do you see the people in the background of this picture? A group of men and women enjoying a spring day in France.  I usually focus on the girl on the swing.  I like her pretty dress, and I am sure that I am not the only woman in the world who says to herself, "I wish I could go back in time to life in France in 1876 when people got dressed up and went to garden parties."  A visit to France confirmed this fact.  Did notice picture of the swing? Curators bought a spring and connected it to the bottom to absorb the weight of even the most substantial figure.  Thousands of women, my self included, stepped upon it to imagine what it would be like to have our picture painted by Renoir and perhaps had a photo taken instead.

Renoir is fabulous.  When you look at his paintings, everything is beautiful, everything is delightful, and he ignored the ugly stuff. Renoir once said, "To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes, pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life without creating still more of them." I could not agree more.