Pay It Forward (With a Pickle)

Good Morning Lovelies!!

I'm on a roll with playing catch up!!  Here we have yet another post that's been a month in the making....

At the beginning of the year, I responded to my friend Kelly's Facebook message about a Pay It Forward project that I thought was brilliant.  She posted a message that said the first five people that responded would receive a gift of some sort from her, provided they did the same thing for five other people who would do if for five more...you get the idea.  The gift could be anything, and you had until the end of the year to do it.  Super fun, right?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I completely forgot about it and I'm very glad about two things:
1.  I have until the end of the year.
2.  Kelly is not a big procrastinator like me and sent me my gift at the very end of June.

Perhaps this is how things are supposed to work out?  You forget and then, magically, a gift arrives in the mail.  Not only does it feel incredible to get your mail and not only have bills waiting for you, but it also serves as a reminder that you've got to get your shit together and figure out what you will be sending out to your five people.  And then I started thinking...WHO was it that I was supposed to be sending things to?  I can remember four of the five, so I need to put feelers out there to figure out who the fifth person is.

So enough of yet another item on my ever growing to-do list, let's get onto the fun part, shall we?

As much as I wanted to be the 5 year old on Christmas morning, I tapped into my self-restraint and acted like an adult.  Meaning, I opened the card first.  And it was a super fun card!

Little did I know, the card was foreshadowing of the little package of fun just waiting to be unwrapped...

I had a good laugh at my new pickle wine stopper.  But then I thought about it and was quite grateful, because really, who hasn't needed to stick a pickle in it at some point??

"Where there's a dill, there's a way."  Very true.

This was perfect!!  And I can't wait for Kelly to come and visit from the East Coast so that we can enjoy a nice bottle of wine and use her fabulous gift to cork it with, but honestly, Kelly hit the nail on the head when she wrote on the inside of the card, "Who are we kidding?  You don't actually ever have left-over wine, do you?"  Well, Kelly, normally no, but on the last occasion that it happened, I remembered what the packaging said about preserving my Pinot and used the pickle!

I'm very lucky that I seem to have such great gift-givers around me.  I might appreciate that more than most because I feel like I NEVER know what to get anyone, so I'm finding this project rather difficult.  And really, the four people that I can remember responding are so incredibly different from one another that I can't cheat and buy five of the same item.  If you've got some ideas as to fun gifts to send out for this project, please let me know.  While I'm very excited about the whole idea, I can use all the help I can get!

Whether you are doing a gift swap or not, perhaps today is the day that you pay it forward while out and about.  The joy that you can bring to someone else for an unexpected good deed or gift and the thought that they may do something for someone else will definitely make it worth it!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, my Lovelies!!  
XOXO