This is a sponsored post but all thoughts are my own.
Did you know that this Wednesday, February 17th, is Random Acts of Kindness Day? After the past year that we have all had this is the perfect holiday to celebrate! I’ve shared ideas for Random Acts of Kindness before and even shared some of the things my family has done-like donated toys to the local children’s hospital– but the official Random Acts of Kindness Day website has a year’s worth of kindness ideas!
Now that my boys are 11 and 12 I wanted to get them more involved in the planning of the Random Acts of Kindness we do so I decided to start a new family tradition- Random Acts of Kindness family planning dinners. My idea was to have a special family dinner every couple of months to talk about acts of kindness we’d like to do, when we’d do them, and what (if any) planning would need to be done in advance.
First, I had to figure out what we’d be eating for the dinner. Food is, after all, the most important part of most meetings in my opinion (don’t you just love when people bring snacks and treats to meetings you go to!?) so that was my first consideration. I wanted to make our planning dinners a success so I decided that every meeting would feature someone’s favorite food and for our first meeting I planned to have my husband’s favorite comfort foods. He has worked so hard for our family during this whole pandemic so it’s only right that he gets the honor of the first meal choice.
Since I don’t like to spend hours in the kitchen (and I don’t often cook from scratch) I was excited to try some of the Great American® Comfort Classics™ lineup – Country Fried Steaks, Crispy Steak Strips, and Southern Style Chicken Breast Fillets. Sold at Winn-Dixie, and found in the freezer aisle, these meats are fully cooked so you just have to heat them up in the oven, microwave, or air fryer and then top them with the gravy that is included and serve them with your favorite sides. I’m all about the simple dinners!
We cooked them in the air fryer, so they were nice and crispy, and then served them with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and mac & cheese. My oldest son and I loved the Southern Style Chicken Breast Fillets so much that we cooked the rest of the bag the next day for an easy school day lunch of chicken sandwiches! My husband’s favorite was the Country Fried Steak and I thought that the Crispy Steak Strips were the perfect size for my two year old’s little hands.
Once the food was planned I created a printable sheet that we could fill out every month with our RAOK ideas and then stick up on the fridge to refer to throughout the month. Kids can color the words at the top and then there is a place for your family to write down the acts of kindness you want to do for the month, the dates you plan to do the RAOKs, who you want to bless, and a spot to write down your to-do list (which could be something like ‘buy coffee gift card’ or ‘have kids color a picture’ to hand out with the cookies you plan to deliver). You can grab the free printable here.
After that, all that’s left is to sit down to dinner together and enjoy a delicious meal while talking about how you can bless others during the month. Your acts of kindness don’t have to be anything extravagant or cost much money. There are so many ways to put a smile on someone else’s face, even from a distance. My family is pretty much homebound still so we thought of a handful of things we could do together from afar including buying something for the person in the car behind us in the drive thru, shoveling a driveway for a neighbor, leaving snacks for the delivery drivers, and making a card for Grandma.
What Random Acts of Kindness will your family do this month? I’d love to chat with you on social media about it!
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