The London Smile Crew was back in full force in January and on a mission to chase away the January blues with... SMILES! :)

16 of us got together on a Sunday morning to decorate some home-baked cookies and cakes with Love and make some fun smile posters.  We had also pre-ordered some SMILE wallet calendars to give out with the goodies -- they had a smile card on one side and a handy 2010 calendar on the other.  We then got bundled up and headed off to Hyde Park where we began to spread some smiles and share our goodies with passers-by. 

Much to our surprise, there were many people and many families strolling through the park on a cold Sunday afternoon in January :) Some of us split up into small groups and headed out around the park to tag people.  The general feeling we got was that people were really pleased to come across someone who was being kind just for the heck of it and making them smile in the process.  Like last time, families with children especially loved the concept of Smile Cards and the kids really enjoyed finding ideas to pay forward from the Generositree. 

After a couple of hours of tagging, we all regrouped once again to share our stories of inspiration from throughout the afternoon and boy was it a warm and toasty circle of sharing despite the cold weather :)

• Kunal and Prashil met a couple of guys who were so blown over by what they were up to that they asked if they come and do this every month, every week or everyday because they just couldn't get enough of it :)
• The highlight for Paras was meeting a 95-year old lady in the palace gardens who said his kind act of offering her a cupcake was the best thing that had happened to her that week. She said that she had not spoken to anyone throughout the entire week until Paras approached her with a smile and an offering in the park.
• Aditi thought this experience was a new challenge compared to last time when we were spreading smiles in beatiful warm sunny weather when everyone was already happy -- this time we were stepping it up and challenging ourselves to dig deeper to find that kindness within so we could share it with others and help to thaw their frowns and turn them into smiles :)
• Jackie, Leona and I were honored to be tagged with red roses from a cute little girl (see photo below).  As she was looking at ideas from the Generositree, she saw one that said "Give away one of your possessions right now" and so she did!

Thanks everyone for sharing your spirit of kindness with Londoners on a cold winter's day.  Stay tuned as the smile spreading adventures continue in London...