Local Baker Wants Her Random Acts of Kindness to Spread

Kirsten McGrath is a wife, a mother, a professional baker and cake designer for The Pie Place, and she's sick of people being mean to each other.

Instead of complaining, she and her three sons—Billy, Andy and Nathan—are doing something about it.

"I am making it my Christmas mission to bring holiday cheer with me wherever I go and I am starting with my family! We are starting the 25 random acts of kindness for the month of December," Kirsten wrote on her blog. "Think how amazing the world could be if everyone tried just a bit everyday to be the person they always wanted to be."

Each day, Kirsten and her boys—ages 2, 4 and 6—make sure to perform a good deed.

So far they've stopped by the Upper St. Clair Volunteer Fire Department to drop off cookies, brought flowers to a local nursing home, sent letters to soldiers at Walter Reed Medical Center and dropped loose change into the Salvation Army red kettles.

The boys' favorite act of kindness was handing out packets of stickers and other items from the Dollar Store to kids at Peterswood Park.  They've also handed out the goodies to children they see crying at the grocery store.

For Kirsten, her favorite act of kindness is the toughest for the boys. She asks her sons to pick an item from their Christmas lists to buy and donate to Toys for Tots.

Kirsten said she couldn't wait for the day when someone performs a random act of kindness for her. She will then know that the spreading of kindness made a big circle.

"It's easy. Some (acts of kindness) are simple. It's loaning 50 cents at the pop machine, putting your cell phone in your pocket at the register, holding doors for people," she said. "The other day we helped some older people load groceries. People are so grateful.

"(Hopefully) more people will be kind and if that keeps being paid forward we, we can create an unending cycle of better people," she said.

And with the recent tragedy in Newtown, CT, being kind to others is more important than ever.

"I am just a simple Peters resident and mother to my three boys who wants them to grow up in a world where people aren't scared to send their children to school," she said.

Kirsten prints off random acts of kindness cards to hand to others after her sons perform their good deeds. Click here for the links to the free printables.