Last Min. Shit for Mother on the Day of Moms

Does your mother’s birthday fall directly before Mother’s Day? Has Easter left you in an extended state of mini-egg brain-haze? 1-hundo-P the Easter candy sale prolonged my self-destruction diet. ANnnnnnd now it’s May 7th and Mother’s day is in 4 ish(?) days. Too late to buy anything online, (unless you live on the edge you crazy, badass bitch) so what are your options? LET’S EXPLORE.

1. Pull flowers from the Garden (hear me out).

If you have time this week, and don’t live next to a concrete jungle: take a hike. 
Some of the wild flowers you can find around this time are JUST budding and could look beautiful in a little mason jar vase. You could also BUY flowers like a normal respectable non-stealing human being, but some public areas have really great patches of forget-me-nots or daisies that are sprouting AS WE SPEAK. You could also buy some flower seeds if your Momma is the gardener type like mine. Also don’t steal from a greenhouse ya idiot. Mom would be pissed.

Look around for some decorating ideas for Mason Jars. I can’t tell you how played out the trend is, but it does the trick every. single. time. I used an old mason jar that I used to paint with, I liked the colors. There is a thousand things you can do with a mason jar. It’s ridiculous.

2. Home-made tissue-flower card.

Does your Mother keep every card you’ve ever given her? I’m pretty sure mine does, but why wouldn’t she? I’m awesome, and so are you. Sit down and write something cute, I mean REALLY cute. Not, “hey mom today I met a boy and he slept over at the apartment” cute, more like “hey mom remember that time you were an awesome mom? me too” cute.
There is this craft I did when I was in my younger years where you took pieces of tissue paper, stuck it around the end of a pencil, dabbed it in glue and placed it on paper. This is that craft, and it’s really fun. It takes about 20 minutes of sticky fingers, it’s easy, and it cost about 5 bucks or less.
Do it like this yo:

3. Spend an a few hours in Chapters

My boyfriend does this thing where he’ll buy books for his Mom and she LOVES THEM. What a crazy way to show someone how much you care by picking out a book for them to read! Also a test to see how much you know them. FYI- Don’t buy your mom a book about how to cook or how to do laundry, I’m pretty sure that’s why Mom’s are awesome and already know how to do that (unless your mom doesn’t know how to do that then…shit sorry). It’ll cost you cheap and you can make a cute afternoon out of it reading all the backs of books and figuring out what kind of story Ma would be into! Maybe you can Instagram the Starbucks you got while at Chapters and get 50 likes too! Woo-whatta day. 4. Paint a Flower Pot

Sort of like #1, but a few days ago I made my roommates paint some cheap terra-cotta pots that you can find literally everywhere.

We painted them white, drew out a pattern, painted them in with normal acrylic paint (dollar store actually), and then sprayed them with some protective semi-gloss clear coat so the rain is no match for the masterpiece. It took maybe an hour and if you already have paint lying around it’s like $6 depending on how many pots ya have. These were from Wal-mart and were 2 dollars each. You could get real crazy with it too, add lace, mod podge the shit outta them, (be normal and use pinterest to get some inspiration), here’s a photo I found that uses gold-leaf and different sized pots:

5. Digital Photo-Album

Last but not least (and maybe the most intense and not-so-last-minute) there is the good-ole-photo-book. So many friends of mine have some sort of photo album they made online–they really are that easy to do depending on the service you use. The best option for a beginner is iPhoto, I’ve never used it but I’m sure google could explain how (c’mon it’s 2014 get with it). I’m not sure if it will come in on time for Mother’s day, but maybe you could show her the template you’ve already ordered online first? I’ve created a self-published book on Lulu.com before and was really happy with the results, the effort was pretty huge though so I’m not suggesting you attack that project on May 7th. I’ve heard good things about Blurb.com as well, again–some research will have to be done and maybe a little extra $$ than you normally expected. ON THE BUDGET SIDE of things you could print out images you have, and manually cut and paste them into a DYI photo album. A lot of the inspiration photos I found were extremely cute and heart-warming, I know a mother would appreciate!

I CAN tell you that your Mom really just wants to feel special and loved on this day, so she won’t care if you can’t color in the lines or ‘just get her a card/gift card’. Take 30 minutes to sit down (without your phone or your computer screen in front of you) and really appreciate the lovely woman that is your Mother.

Spend time, make plans, call more often. That’s all Mom’s really want, right?

- jm !

Share