Mother's Day Giving :)

I found myself in the position this week of helping my daughter in law with the issue of a Mother's Day present for her mom.  She was concerned that she didn't have much of a budget (with a toddler and one in the oven, that's perfectly understandable), but she wanted to make sure her mom knew she was appreciated.  So she asked me for suggestions.  Wow, talk about an honor that she trusted me enough to ask, and pressure for me to deliver lol.

After some discussion, and considering they live across the country from each other, she decided that a t-shirt with her son's (her mom's only grandchild at this point) handprints all over it in fabric paint.  It's not an expensive present, but it's priceless, because any parent or grandparent knows that babies don't stay babies for very long.  I found very reasonably priced fabric paints on ebay from this seller, who was very helpful and prompt with shipping, and who included at no charge a piece of cardboard for testing the colors at no charge.  I sent my daughter in law the link so she could choose colors, then ordered the lot of 10 and had them sent to her.  I also suggested that she would need a piece of cardboard to put in the t-shirt to keep the colors from bleeding through to the other side, as well as paper plates to put the colors in, and for easy clean up afterwards, since my 18-month grandson is very active and not at all concerned with being neat and clean lol.  I'm waiting to see how it turns out.  :)

In working retail and in nursery departments for many years, I've also run across other inexpensive but lovely ideas.  I remember one person in to buy several flats of bedding plants and flowers, and she explained that her family tradition was that everyone went to her widowed mother's home for the holiday and spent the time enjoying her company, cooking for her and planting her flower beds for her for the summer.  I thought that was a great idea, because it was not expensive, not hard, but since her mother had gotten on in years, saved her some work as well as giving her a gift that lasted all season, much longer than just taking her out to dinner.  Another family I know of would pool their resources and purchase a couple of large ceramic pots for their mother's driveway (after some years she had a row of beautiful pots down both sides), and would dual plant them all with flowers and an edible plant so their mom wouldn't have to bend over a garden. 

As for me, all I ever asked for on holidays and for my birthday was a clean home and well behaived kids lol.  I'm not sure how many times I actually got that, but we had some interesting adventures along the way.  I would often take the kids to a state park for a day outing, or even to our lovely scenic downtown area where we would be tourists for the day.  We often took a lot of pictures, which are priceless today. 

To all the mothers and grandmothers reading this, Happy Mother's Day :)