The Little Things

One year ago Jake and I decided to take note of all the 'little things' that went down over the course of 2012.  Turns out we had a lot of BIG things happen this year but we kept track all the same.

I'm a shutterfly junkie - I mean they run a promo on Groupon every other week, so I get sucked into buying photo books. Which I am thankful for because I have lots of memories squashed into those book pages.

This time I wanted something different, something simpler and cheaper to remember our daily life. So what's cheaper than a pen, old receipts, stubs, post it's and napkins? Not much, so that's what we landed on. I grabbed an old mason jar from my grandmas collection, made a little tag and we went to work the next 365 days. Well, not every day but here and there we each jotted down a 'little thing' that happened that day.

What's a 'little thing' you ask? Anything that makes you smile without it taking ton of effort!  An extra chicken nugget in a 6 pack, a warm day in November, Real Housewives marathon, lunch already packed when I go to pack it ... really, just about anything can work.

We stuck with 'little things' that revolved around us, fun stuff we did, special moments we had, unprompted gestures of kindness, surprises and the like. We wrote them down of whatever piece of paper we had at the time and stuffed them into the mason jar - to open and read on New Year's Day 2013.

I kept close watch on the jar the first few months and was adding every week or so.  Jake was doing the same. It died off for a few weeks then picked back up off and on - this went on entire year until we finally came to January 1st.

We slept in (Jake finally had an entire day off!) and decided to crack open the jar before we headed to a friend's house for brunch. We had about 50 'little things' to read - we laughed a ton, remembered special moments and I teared up up a few times.  Our little things piled up to create one healthy, happy BIG year.

We have not decided if we will make this a yearly tradition but it made us look back on the year and realize that money and physical possessions didn't make our year. It was the insignificant, daily grind nonsense stuff we shared with each other.

Happy New Year!  We hope you have a 'little thing' kinda year!