Make A Family Vision Board

As part of our post deployment transition one of the activities we did was to make a family vision board. What a great activity that was to take us out of thinking in terms of deployment, to be able to put those worries and realities behind us and start thinking about the future.

We sat together with a large stack of magazines and each had a pair of scissors and we all started clipping. Within less than an hour we had a nice stack of pictures to glue to our poster board. We each had a chance to go through our pile and tell what it was about each photo that inspired and excited us for the future. It was really amazing to see how similar some of our dreams were and sometimes how unique each person's photos were to them.

We sat together and arranged all the photos by size and shape to cover the entire surface of our vision board. When we got home we hung it up on the back side of our front door, so that each time we head out into the world we see it and it can remind us of our hopes and dreams for the future. You wouldn't see that in an interior design magazine but it works for us right now.

On our poster are dreams for more time together as a family, travel, adventure, more time with extended family, more calm, more time in nature, more bike rides, more time with friends. It is fun to look at it and remember who picked each photo and why. It's such a great way for us to see who we are as a family, see where we want to go and how we want to live.

All you need to create your own family vision board is a poster board, a stack of magazines, glue sticks and a pair of scissors for each family member who is old enough to wield a pair. It would be a fun family night activity and it could be followed up with another activity where each person makes their own vision board too.

I love vision boards. I love being able to see where I want to go and even better to see what has come into my life that was important to me. I was going through my hopes for 2014 a few days ago and noticed that very unexpectedly one of my hopes had already come to be. I was so surprised. I love how that happens. Putting hopes out there really does create an energy of bringing them to you, sometimes with no more effort needed by you at all. Many times I have put something on a vision board and then someone has just given it to me out of the blue. That always stuns me but there is something about letting the universe know you would like something that starts a chain of events that can be quite surprising.

images by kalanicut