Heartfelt And Heartwarming Ideas For Mother’s Day
My two kids always make sure Mother’s Day is special for me. They are both avid drawers and quite the entertaining artists! Brady usually makes me a book because he knows I love his stories so much. Katy draws the best smiley face and sunshine pictures so she always makes me one whenever I need it (I get them daily!). Today, I thought I’d share a bit with you from my last Mother’s day to help give you a few ideas for this year.
I love to give homemade gifts whenever possible. I was raised to value them above anything store bought. How easy it is to go pick something off a rack or shelf and buy it, but when we put our time and hearts into something, that is a gift to be treasured!
Today I’m going to bring you photos of the gifts I gave to my mother and mother in law last year for Mother’s Day. I usually do something different each year and I just got a wild hair to do embroidery last year. Before I do that, though, let me bring you my guaranteed to warm their hearts and make them smile gift that your children can give Grandmothers and Mother’s alike.
This is the perfect gift (in my mind), especially if time and money are at a premium. Most importantly, its given with love from your precious children and I consider it to be the most heartwarming present of all.
Here is my one NO FAIL MOTHER’S DAY PRESENT TO END ALL PRESENTS!
My HOME RUN, hands down, all time greatest gift for Mother’s day is much simpler and very inexpensive, but a gift that will be cherished and enjoyed more than any other. I can’t imagine a mother receiving a sweeter gift than one of her children or grandchildren showing up with a red geranium and singing this…
I Love Geraniums from Christy SouthernPlate.com on Vimeo.
If you have problems viewing this video, please visit Vimeo FAQ by clicking here.
Of course, we have to rehearse each year even though I’ve done it for the past two. I go to Wal Mart or Lowe’s and buy a pretty red geranium for each Grandmother. I usually just get them in the plastic pots and transplant them to a nice Terra cotta pot because red geraniums look so pretty in terra cotta (I think). This is much easier to do for the grandmothers who live close by.
When I first heard that song, I think it was sung by Judy Garland (even though it is an old Shirley Temple song), and loved it so much I memorized it on the spot! Here are the lyrics for y’all. Please pardon my singing in the clip. If you can’t sing well, sing LOUD! ~giggle~
I love geraniums
Bright, red geraniums
And every time I see one
I always think of you
I hate chrysanthemums
Can’t say chrysanthemums
I might as well just be one
If I can’t be with you!
Now this is what I did for my mother and mother in law last year. You can whip these up in a day or two.
I purchased shirts in a store and then prettied them up with hand embroidery. I dearly love to do embroidery and for these, I chose my favorite palette of pastels and a super simple stitch. For the frilled border around the collar, I just traced it onto a piece of cardboard and then cut it out and used that as a pattern to trace it onto the shirts with a pencil. This is my mother’s shirt.
This is my Mother in Law’s shirt. Her shirt was pale blue so I stuck with the pink flowers and yellow centers because they showed up best.
Close up of Mama’s shirt…
Close up of Linda’s shirt…
Now if you don’t know how to do hand embroidery, let me introduce you to my favorite place on the web for embroidery enthusiasts, Tipnut.com. Yes, Tipnut covers tons of topics but she is the absolute most wonderful embroidery resource I’ve found online – and all free! She even has links to videos to teach you how to get started. I found a video which teaches the stitch I did for the collar frill from Tipnut’s site and you can view it here. They call it a stem stitch. It is often used in redwork. I’m a subscriber and every time I turn around she is posting more free embroidery patterns on her website! Most of them are vintage, which is some of the prettiest embroidery I’ve come across.
Really though, all I did for these flowers was make a few stitches that overlapped each other to form a star. Above you can see where I drew out a flower and leaf like I stitched on these shirts. See that? SUPER SIMPLE! the arrow directly next to the flower is actually what I stitched for leaves and a stem! I did draw two arrows coming from my instructions to point to the flower and stem in this pic. Just did that to see if y’all were awake and all 
.
I then did a little french knot in the center but you can skip that or just do a little x in a contrasting color to form your center. For the collar, I did a chain stitch, which is the basic embroidery stitch (you can learn it from the videos here).
I didn’t space the flowers any particular way or trace them on their first, I just did it all at random.
If you’re under the gun and would like to do this project, just pick up a shirt, an embroidery needle, and a few of your favorite colors of cross stitch (DMC) thread and do the flowers at random on the front of the shirt or even just a few on the collar. Its really a precious gift.
This year, I also got my mother something a little more and fun. She and I both love antiques and memories of our childhood. Since she was a big Howdy Doody fan as a child, I picked her up a vintage Howdy Doody advertisement from Ebay, complete with Andy Devine!
I’m having it framed for her and matted in yellow. Mama and I love to hang vintage ads like this up in our kitchens.
Now I want one for me, too! lol
I mentioned earlier that Brady makes me books for Mother’s Day. He often writes entire stories and illustrates them start to finish! Last year he presented me with an amazing Transformers book which went through the plot of the entire movie! He also did a fill in the blank book from school which he illustrated and answered questions about me. I thought y’all would enjoy seeing some of that.
This is a photo of Brady vomiting. ~takes a moment to study the photo and smile at the wonder that is nine year old boys~. It was a page to describe how your mother makes you feel better when you are sick. Just in case I couldn’t tell what was going on, my little bundle of enlightenment wrote the words “me barfing” and drew an arrow to the pic. He wrote “gives me medisin” on the fill in blank. Bless his heart.
And this is proof that it really is the little things which matter most to children. As much as I cook: homemade cookies, that six tiered scooby doo cake iced with orange and teal decorations that he wanted for his birthday once, big meals that weight the table down…Brady loves it when I make hot dogs.
~chuckles~ He’s gonna make some woman very happy someday!
I hope your Mother’s Day is filled with love and appreciation for all that you do and for all of the love that you give. I promise it is appreciated, even if the applause is often unheard . What you do is by far the most important and impact filled job that ever was.
Gratefully,
Christy
“By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before”~Edwin Elliot
Posted by Christy Jordan
on May 5 2009. Filed under Misc.
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haha… Very cute. I ain’t about to do any embroidery cause i’d have to give up my man card but this is a great post. Brady is like “I’m a guy, I ain’t singin nuttin” I’m glad he gives in.
Cherish it while you can. In a couple years he will consider eating live slugs before singing on camera. He might think eating live slugs ON camera would be pretty cool.
If you ever wanna know a boys thought process it goes like this:
“bad idea, bad idea.. GOOD IDEA!”
Again.. great post.. made me laugh.
Christy,
I have an 8 year old grandson and he’s into the Transformer’s too – and even writes stories like Brady!!! Maybe it’s the age they are in? Anyway, you are so right about giving something made with you hands and heart . . .
I really look forward to your e-mails and enjoy reading each one.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Christy,
I just LOVE your posts each day, you can ALWAYS bring a smile to my face, thank you!!! My son Jake is now 9(as of March), and I don’t think I could ever expect him to sing on camera for me—- that is true sacrifice to a boy their age, and true LOVE for his momma!! So sweet =) However, my 2 red-heads (his sisters, poor thing!), would sing FOREVER on camera. Especially songs from the Hannah Montana new movie, or HSM#3 (which my son also loves)!
Happy Mother’s Day to YOU, I know you deserve it!!
Blessings to you!
Here’s a good quote for you Christy,
“The secret to having a good day is to focus on your blessings, not on your problems.”
What better way to start your Mother’s day, but remembering all your blessings?
Loved the kid’s sing-along, they did great! Also loved the handmade gifts, there is really nothing better! Keep it coming.
As I sat here reading I began to think of all the wonderful gifts I have received over the years from my children (one is 30 and one is 18). All the sillouttes (spelling), hand prints and flowers made from construction paper and popcicle sticks are still stand outs in my head.
Every day is Mother’s Day when you can see your children’s smiles
The book is so cute and you will treasure it more as each year passes. your litle boy wil be a man before you can blink an eye. As I nurse-I could not help but notice that he is barfing in red. Looks like a serious case of vomiting blood!!!!!
Nah, he probably just ate some red velvet cake! Happened to me once in college. Probably not a good story for this web site, though!
hehe….your kids are so adorable. Do they know you’ve posted the video up for the entire world to see?
What an uplifting, sweet post complete with little children singing and one really exhausted mama (Girl, how DO you have time to do everything?). I really appreciated your extra effort to make all of US remember our cherished times with our little ones AND our Mother’s, even though Mama passed when I was 14. Now, since my 23 yr old son Adam is coming in from GA in TWO DAYS to visit for a wk., we will jes hafta get out “all them” videos/photo albums and go down Memory Lane for my Mother’s Day. weeeeeeeeee
Man, I miss having little ones to sing so sweetly and scrawl pictures, even if the vomit looks like blood. ;} There was never a more ACTION-filled kid than my Adam and he loved to hide from me in Dept. Store’s clothes racks then scream BOO!! His nickname is still “Boo”. My Amanda as a toddler couldn’t say her pet name “Precious” so it came out “Pwethish”, gripping that purple “Barney” doll for all she was worth, dancing around with her blond curls bouncing to her rendition of “I like to eat Apples and Bananas”. ~sigh~ Sorry, my tangent got a little long. Happy Mother’s Day, Sweet Christy!
Your website is wonderful and your posts always bring a smile to my face but this one was absolutely precious – what a beautiful family you have and wow do your youngens’ remind me of mine
but I think if i tried to get them to sing I might have a mutiny on my hands. I agree though homemade is from the heart.
I generally give plants for Mother’s Day. Yesterday, I was thrilled to find the prettiest ferns and planters at my grocery store and at a great price to boot! Yes, I did get some stares as I wheeled around the store with the cart filled with four ferns in the buggy and three planters of flowers beneath. But they are gorgeous and will last all summer. And I am cooking Mother’s Day dinner for my family Saturday night and lunch for my husband’s family Sunday, so that’s my attempt at a homemade gift. By the way, my mother-in-law actually gave birth to my husband on a Mother’s Day, so they always share it and we celebrate his birthday as well.
That is too cool… what better gift for a Mom and that is to”become” one on such a special day!
All the new delicious things I try and my Dear Husband wants spaghetti and totino’s pizzas! Some guys never grow out of it! This is a very warming post! Thanks!
it’s the little things that come from the heart that mean more than all the material things you can think of. haha I’ve been making my mom homemade birthday and Mother’s Day cards since I was little (her birthday usually falls right before Mother’s Day) and now that I’m almost 19, that’s still what she wants from me. =) I also think she will get the days off from cooking and such.
These are great–Time and thought are always the best gifts! Take a look at the aprons I did for grandmothers if you have a minute! Happy Mother’s Day!
The embroidery idea sounds wonderful! In our household, it has always been a tradition to buy a potted orchid for my mom (she really loves them!) but it’s starting to get just a *little bit* crowded now. This might be the perfect solution!
And as always, your children are adorable!
Dear Christy
What a lovely, heartwarming post.
I love the video and the ideas for presents.
You are truly blessed to have such a loving and lovely family around you.
[...] sure to check out my Mother’s day post from last year for inexpensive but heartfelt ideas to please any [...]
Happy Mother’s Day to all.`-:
Even today, 2 yrs later, I still feel a little for Brady. He really didn’t wanna sing on this video….I suspect.
Christy~
Happy Mothers Day to you too! Wishes for a blessed day! Children are the most precious gift I could ever receive! I have a 19 year old daughter and a 14 year old son and they still make my heart sing! God bless!
What a Mother’s Day memory I have! When my son was just about Brady’s age he wasn’t able to get me a gift, but–the day after he came home from school with his hand behind his back! He said, “Mom, I got you a late Mother’s Day’s gift” and presented me with a small, dead, flattened out snake. I waivered between shock and laughter! But now he’s 50 and it’s probably one of my most precious memories. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to everyone.