free encouragement

I found another interesting web-based project recently, which seems very appropriate for my daily post of goodness. Booooooom! and Design for Mankind have joined forces to create Free encouragement, a project which is absolutely all about positivity and nice things. The idea behind the project is to counteract the negativity that we find “all around us these days... infesting the internet... taking over the big screen... showing up on your bank statement”.

The first part of the project, led by Booooooom!, has been the creation of an online 'gallery of encouragement' - anyone can submit their own personal encouraging messages to the project: “You can use this gallery to encourage a close friend or someone you just happened to pass by on the street. You can encourage a relative who may be ill or the girl who handed you your coffee this morning. You could even use this place to encourage yourself!” You can see the gallery here, which makes very entertaining reading. The images here are some of my personal favourites from the gallery.































The second half of the project, led by Design for Mankind, has not yet been announced - it's veiled in mystery until it kicks off this Friday. I'm intrigued to see what will happen next, but there's no doubt that it will certainly be cheerful.















I went back to work today. It was quite challenging, but I survived the day and made it home, despite the freezing cold, and nearly falling over on the ice about a hundred times on the short walk from the train station back to my house. Here are some other cheerful and lovely things from my day:

• Frosty hedgerows and sunshine in the morning
• Steak and kidney pudding, chips, gravy and peas for lunch (which really should have been on my ‘100 favourite things list I think) - greedy but good
• This monkey
• A forecast for 8 inches of snow tonight!