I had so much fun doing something every week last year for my 50th birthday that I decided I wanted to something this year but of a different sort. I think the seed got planted when I was doing research for Gift Idea #49 – Memory Jar. One of the ideas was to put slips of paper in a jar as things you want to remember happen each day. The next piece came when I was listening to a talk by Dieter Uchtdorf called “Of Regrets and Resolutions”  One of the things he suggests we decide our own happiness. And I believe he is right. I think these two ideas combined somewhere in my brain and the “Joy Jar” was born.

I took an old canning jar that I really like and added some ribbon and tags in the happy color, yellow. I also collected a bunch of yellow tags and pieces of card stock to write my joyful moments on. My plan is to post a list of my Joy Jar moments each week (hopefully on Saturdays) for the rest of the year. So here goes my first list:

• bright sunshine
• Yakira is in phase 6
• seeing Zodaic and Kai romping through the snow in the backyard
• Bill and Zodiac playing
• taste of good ice cream
• how good heat feels after being outside on a cold day
• eating pomelo
• Zodiac’s cute little face
• 99 countries visited my blog in 2012
• a brand new year (2013)
• eating Lindor chocolates
• visual image of Lotus (a puppy in training) wearing ankle socks in pink and yellow because his raiser thinks his feet are cold
• Zodiac’s joy
• aurora borealis
• thinking of our trip to Alaska
• homemade pizza
• being back inside our warm house
• cuddling with our cat, Gandy
• Tillamook yogurt for $.59 each
• seeing Zodiac and Gandy looking out the window together, Gandy in his tower and Zodiac with his front feet on the bottom part of the tower and his body underneath.

I had fun doing this. I’m looking forward to the coming weeks. What has brought you joy this past week?