How to Plan Fun and Inexpensive Mother's Day Gifts

Flowers and greeting cards dominate Mother's Day gifts.

Mother's Day typically brings out the flowers and the greeting cards. As a matter of fact, the day trails only Christmas and Valentine's Day for greeting card sales. If you want to buck the trend and do something different and special for mom -- without breaking the bank -- you can create some fun items at home.

Things You'll Need

• Time

Instructions

1. Get your kids involved in doing something for their mom. The more they are involved, the more meaning the gift will have. Think about their abilities: Can they write? Draw? Incorporate their talents into a gift. If they are too young to draw, they can do hand prints or fingerprints.

2. Come up with some things you can personalize, such as an apron, a canvas bag, a pillowcase or a paper to frame. These can be decorated by your children alone or with your help. You can add in poems or quotations that celebrate her personality. Fabric or craft stores will have many ideas for things to personalize, as well as selling fabrics, paints and stamps.

3. Do a bigger card: a book. You can either take many sheets of paper, fold and bind them together with ribbon, or be more elaborate. Punch holes at the top or sides and use some jewelry or craft wire to make your a spiral-bound notebook. Then fill with your children's drawings or writings, or scribble with your own funny thoughts. You also can come up with questions to interview your children about and put the answers in the book: What does mommy want to be when she grows up? What is her favorite color? What does she love the most about you?

4. Find her favorite spa, salon, or cosmetics counter and make up a coupon good for one or many trips there. You also might try a gift basket from a bath and body store, or a set of homemade coupons good for one back and foot rub, cleaning the house for a week or a month, and maybe a pedicure/manicure from you.

5. Make a CD of your children's goo-goo sounds, funny answers to questions, or singing funny songs? Use your mp3 recorder or computer microphone to record them, then burn to a CD. This will be a treasured keepsake. Use one of the many photos you have -- digital or scanned in -- to turn it into a T-shirt, mug, mouse pad, calendar, or puzzle at one of the many online sites that offer such services (see Resources).

References

• Y98: 16 Amazing Statistics About Moms and Mother's Day

Resources

• Snapfish