Happy Canada Day folks … to all of those born here, and to all those who have found their way to our shores. Remember to hug the ones you love today. Or a stranger. Or, preferably, both!!
Hugs,
M&M
P.S. A shout-out today to our wonderful friend Glennis, who wrote this beautiful poem back in 2019: Free Hugs
P.S. II, the sequel – a reminder that next Saturday (July 6, 2024) is International Free Hugs Day! Let your hugging inhibitions go and embrace the love!!
Hi Folks:
Today (June 8) is a very special day for us, for three reasons:
1) It’s World Ocean Day! As Sylvia Earle said, “No blue, no green.” Oceans are vital in so many ways that we can barely begin to comprehend.
2) On June 8, 2002, Marcia proposed, and we continue to celebrate Us every day.
3) AND, our first Free Hugs adventure was on June 8, 2010! You can read more about that here, but when we set out we were – in a word – terrified. Excited, but terrified. We had no idea what to expect, and we stood there with our FREE HUGS posters for what seemed like an eternity until a little girl saw us and came running over. The rest, as they say, is history. Eleven years, thousands and thousands of hugs, handshakes, fist bumps, smiles, stories and more shared with people from (at least) 88 countries. Our thanks to each of you – every hug is unique and special.
In honour of the occasion we updated our Hugging Spot in front of our house:
(No you’re not allowed to point out that we got the rainbow colours reversed – purple is such a lovely colour and it called out … and it went downhill from there. Think of it as a sunrise instead. A new day. Yeah, that’s it. 🙂 )
Remember to hug someone you love today. Or a stranger. Or, preferably, both!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
2024 marks the third year we’ve been creating Hugging Spots on the sidewalk in front of our house (and occasionally elsewhere). Last year I believe we made 11 patterns and about the same in 2022. We’ll see what this year brings! The image above is actually our second pattern for this year; the first was for Valentine’s Day. To keep all of the patterns in one place we’ll add that to the bottom of this post. If you happen to be walking by our little corner of Victoria feel free to share a hug with those who are accompanying you. If you’re nowhere near us, feel free to create your own Hugging Spot! All it takes is a little chalk, a little time and a little love. Many thanks to the wonderful people who stopped to chat while work was in progress and special thanks to the young woman who offered a hug before the artwork was completed!
If you want to see our previous patterns you can find them here: 2023 Hug Zones and 2022 Hug Zones.
Remember to hug someone you love today, even if it’s you!!
M&M Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
Today is Valentine’s Day, an international excuse to be more loving to each other (not that we need one) and a reason to eat good chocolate (not that we need one!) We always think sharing hugs with loved one is a good idea, so we wanted to encourage others to join in the celebration!
NB: While Mike was drawing with chalk, Marcia was scampering around the neighbourhood leaving anonymous valentines in our local Little Library boxes … 🤫
Hugs,
M&M
P.S. We’re in the middle of Random Acts of Kindness week. What are you doing to be kind today? Remember to be kind to yourself as well as others!!
P.S. II, the sequel: Apparently in the 17th century it was customary for young gentlemen to write the name of their betrothed on their shirt cuff for Valentine’s Day – hence wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve.
Hi Folks:
According to the folks at Postcrossing.com, today (October 1, 2023) is World Postcard Day! The theme for this year is, “Sharing Postal Hugs”. We always think sharing hugs with loved one is a good idea, so we wanted to encourage others to join in the celebration!
Send a postcard (and hugs) to those you love today!!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
This image shows our most recent Hug Zone chalk art drawing. The idea was independently created by the mathematician Roger Penrose. It’s a form of aperiodic tiling, and the idea has been around for millenia. For more on that, see here: Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
At the end of July we had one of our grandsons come for a visit, and we did our best to squire him around town and visit/revisit some of the highlights Victoria has to offer. Of course we had to involve him with creating new chalk art patterns, to which he willingly acquiesced. Here then are the world’s first G M hugging spot originals!
First, in front of our house:
Because every cloudy sky needs a rainbow. The shadow is from a street sign, but if it looks to you like a bunny jumping up into the rainbow, that’s okay too!
Evidence of people carrying our rainbow with them – even if it’s only on the bottoms of their shoes!
A few days later we went downtown to our old hugging spot at the Homecoming Memorial and we created Hugscotch 2.0!
It works! (as evidenced by Marcia and grandson). We were even lucky enough to see spontaneous hugging taking place before we left! We applauded, of course. 🙂
Remember to hug the ones you love today! We trust G. will put to good use the box of sidewalk chalk that arrived at his house before he returned home. 🤗
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
A year ago we posted a blog post titled, “Receiving Kindness“, where we wrote about two gifts we had received in exchange for our ongoing hugging spot chalk art project. The first was a beautiful painted stone someone left on top of our gate, and the second was a lovely note someone taped to the inside of our gate.
Our last blog post (A Smile from Niklas) profiled a smile rock we received from someone named Niklas, left on top of our gate, and this has since been followed by another lovely note! We found it after setting out our BE A HUGGING STAR design; the note looks like this: Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
This being the first Saturday in July, as you’re likely well aware, today is International Free Hugs Day! If you’re lucky enough to live here, today is also Canada Day! 🇨🇦
To that end we thought we’d combine the celebrations and take our sidewalk chalk down to our old hugging spot at the Homecoming Memorial. For full disclosure, we scanned the Canada flag image into the computer and used CorelDraw to create and print out the template.
We had fun making the drawing and interacting with those who stopped to chat, and when we were finished cleaning up, we retired to a nearby bench to people watch. While it felt a little strange not to be there with our FREE HUGS posters, in the short time we were there we were immensely gratified to see people stop to photograph the hugging spot and even more so to watch two couples and a group of three engage in hugs at our hugging spot! We know our hugging tree (a western white pine) was also happy to witness these events.
Speaking of our hugging tree, the oldest image we have is from July 2, 2011. At that time our tree was a sapling, barely reaching the top of the fence:
Eleven years later, you may notice that our tree has grown, just a little bit. We’ve been feeding them love, hugs and gentle needle caresses for 14 years.
Same hat, same jacket, same beautiful smile. 🙂
We had such fun downtown that we decided to use the same pattern to update the hugging spot in front of our house.
So, if you’re in Canada, help us celebrate Canada Day and International Free Hugs Day by hugging the ones you love! Today and every day…
Hugs,
M&M
Anyone else needing a nice warm hug? As explained in our We Have Huggers!! post in May last year, we came across a short video on Instagram showing someone who had created a Free Hugs zone in sidewalk chalk outside their house – and the various people who had taken advantage of the situation. Always willing to contribute to more acts of kindness, we created our own first attempt. We were so inspired by the effect that we created 11 different hug zone patterns in 2022 (12, if you include the one we created at our old Free Hugs spot at the Homecoming Memorial at Ship Point). Continue Reading →