Sew Its Saturday: 10 DIY Mother's Day Gifts She's Sure to Love

Can you believe Mother’s Day is coming up in just 3 short weeks?? I can’t believe it’s almost May, let alone Mother’s Day!! And, if you’re like me, you have thought of a million and one different gifts to give your sweet momma. Yet you have nothing to give her!

Yep…I always have great intentions and lofty goals of these wonderfully elaborate gifts that don’t ever seem to come to fruition. So, this year I’m starting a little early…okay, earlier than I usually do anyway!

I am a big believer in homemade gifts for those we love; especially parents and grandparents. If you’re like me, you have enough knick-knacks around and you don’t want anything else to dust! And the time and care that goes into those homemade gifts is just priceless!!

Mom’s love their “job” but at the end of the day, let’s face it…it’s nice to be pampered. 

So, here are 10 DIY Mother’s Day gifts that do just that – show her how much you love and appreciate her!

1. Mini Scrapbook Album – I made these a few years back for the grandma’s and great-grandma’s in our family. They were a huge hit! Some of them even carried them around for months to show off their precious heirlooms!! Mine were paper album kits from Creative Memories, much like this one for Mom or this one for Grandma. Add a few fun photos of your sweet kiddos, some sentimental words (or funny ones if you like) and presto…you’re done!

2.  Handprint/Footprint canvas – I actually made these for Christmas for all the grandparents and greats. But, you could change it up a bit and do handprints as flowers for a bouquet for Mom or footprints as butterflies. Or come up with a design all your own! Let the kids help and who knows what you’ll come up with! Be creative and mom’s sure to love it!!

3.  Homemade Sugar Scrubs and Bath Salts – Purchase this ebook and make Mom some homemade sugar scrubs!! Purchase an extra copy and give the recipes to her so she can make her own! Or use this simple and quick recipe to make Mom some scented bath salts.

4. Homemade Lip Balm – Now, I’m not one to wear lipstick, but I love my chapstick. But, I would love to have some homemade lip balm!! This blog gives 3 recipes (Mandarin Nutmeg, Peppermint Cocoa & Lime Coconut) but at the end it gives some tips on creating your own recipes!

5. Photo Cubes – Another quick and easy gift for Mom or Grandma. This blog post gives great instructions on how to create your own Photo Cubes. Use scrapbook paper to back smaller photographs or just to dress it up a bit! Get creative and just go for it!

6. Photo Tile – I saw this tile sometime last year and knew I could make those for the grandparents and greats for Christmas. But, it would also work for Mother’s Day!! Take the kids out for a fun afternoon (or morning, when its cooler) of candid picture taking and make some tiles for Mother’s Day! Dress it up with some scrapbook paper and a few 3D embellishments and you’ll be set!

7.  Homemade Glass Pendants – I made some of these for the girls in my family this past Christmas. These two blogs (here and here) have some great ideas on different pendant ideas. They are super easy to make and most craft stores will have what you need!! Again, take the kids out for some candid pictures, pick our your favorite and you’re ready!

8. Sweet Hanging Sachets – Sew 4 Home has a great tutorial on how to make these uber cute hanging sachets!! Hang it on a decorative hanger and you’re good to go!!

9. DIY Painted Canvas Tote – Ashley is so talented and she’s done it again! She has a super easy to follow tutorial on how she created this divine tote. You could paint her favorite flowers in her favorite color or…put the kids’ handprints on it for a more personal touch that she’s sure to love! Slip in a couple books she likes or a “chick-flick” she’s had her eye on. Or better yet…get her a gift certificate for a pedicure, massage or another special “treat”!!!

 My inspiration for the Mom’s Day OFF Jar

10. Mom’s Day OFF Jar –Give Mom a “day off” by pulling out a slip of paper and doing what it says. Have the kids help decorate the jar on the outside and then put paper flowers, colored by the kids, attach them to pipe cleaners and you’ve got a homemade kid-bouquet! You’ll have to forgive me for not having one of these to show you. (I’m secretly hoping the Hubster will give me one of these this year!) Feel free to download, print and use my Free Printable here. To use my printable, cut the Mom’s Day OFF button out and adhere to a jar/can with Mod Podge. Then, cut apart the strips of chores and fold them in half and stick them in the jar/can. I also left some blank strips so you can fill in your own ideas. Add your own homemade flowers and voila…Mom gets a “Day OFF” and a bouquet from her favorite little people!

Hope that gives you some quick and easy ideas for Mother’s Day. There are certainly many more ideas out there these were just some of my favorites!

What’s your favorite Mother’s Day gift?? How do you celebrate Mother’s Day?

Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments or leave a link to your own post! I love reading them and its keeps my creative juices flowing!!

Blessings,

Annette


Linking up here today:
The House of Hepworths
Comfy in the Kitchen
Be Different Act Normal
The Better Mom
Raising Arrows
The Straightened Path
A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
The Imperfect Housewife
Deep Roots At Home
Growing Home Blog
Women Living Well
Our Simple Country Life

Teachable Tuesdays: Homeschool Curriculum Choices - Part 2: Preschool

Please ignore the mess in the background.
Here is a rare picture of all 3 kids at the table for school-time!

Our third official year of homeschooling begins June 4^th. But, this year will be much different than the previous two years. This year I will not only school our oldest (2^nd grade), but also our two Middles (ages 3 & 2). WOW!!! Can I tell you how nervous I am? Yet I’m also so excited to see them learn and grow!! I didn’t get to school our oldest at this young age, so I’m bursting with excitement, joy, and overwhelming anxiety all at the same time!

Anxiety you ask? Yep! I have it all planned out on paper and even a rough schedule outlined so we can mostly stay on task. This year will really stretch me, because I am an on-time, task oriented, Type A personality and well…that doesn’t compute with my Middles. So, it should be interesting, fun and a wonderful year of learning for everyone!

I wanted to share with you our preschool curriculum choices for our upcoming school year. The links I am providing in no way give me commission or any compensation. It’s merely to give you a reference. I did not necessarily purchase my products from the site I link to. I researched and found the least expensive option and ordered/bought from there. I’ll share more about that at the end of this post, so stay tuned!!! Next week I’ll share how we structure our school days.

Okay, so our choices for Preschool are obviously less than those for our 2^nd grader. But, somehow that makes this task much more daunting! Nevertheless, I have finally decided on the following choices.

BrainyBaby Series: Last year my grandmother bought the entire Brainy Baby system for about a quarter of the original price!! And I plan to use every last bit of it with my Middles! We will use it to introduce our shapes, colors, numbers, letters and music this year. I also have Spanish, Sign Language and Art, but that will have to wait another year or so. I’m not that ambitious!!

ABeka: I will use this curriculum for our Numbers and Letters. We will do one Number per month and one Letter per week for Mister Mouse. Miss Priss will probably just color along and get some of it, but I don’t expect her to get it all. She just turned two, so it could get interesting! But, I do want her to know her numbers for sure, so that’s what we’ll mainly focus on this year with her.

I will also use the A Beka curriculum for most of our Arts and Crafts projects. They have some fun, creative and easy ideas that I’d like to take advantage of.

Bible: I don’t have a particular curriculum to use in this area. I like to read the Bible stories to them and find pictures they can color or activities we can do to reinforce what God’s word says. We will do this Bible reading time with Mister Bull as part of our Family Bible time during our school day.

As most Homeschooling Mom’s will tell you, it is so wonderful to be able to find and print so many FREE and wonderful papers online now!! I use these papers as fillers and supplementals to our other curriculum.

Here are a few of my favorite spots to find them:

SchoolExpress (over 17,000 FREE printables in a variety of subjects)

Kidszone (easy to find, sorted by grade or topic)

BiblePrintables (some great printables on this site. Easy to find too!)
All Kids Network (a fabulous resource for crafts, worksheets & activities!)

Some blogs I subscribe to also have stores where they offer their own curriculum. I’ve been very pleased with the ones I’ve purchased from:

HeavenlyHomemakers

MommySchool @ Oopsey Daisy 

(be sure and check out her Freebies tab too!)

So, that’s our curriculum for Preschool! What’s your favorite Preschool curriculum? I would love to hear what you are using or have used in the past. Or do you just do your own thing?

Now, I promised you I would fill you in on all my curriculum deals. Honestly, it takes quite a bit of effort to find the best deals, but believe me…it pays off!!! Here’s where I search for my deals.

Amazon

Half.com 

(a subsidiary of Ebay)

Christianbook.com

Timberdoodle

Individual Manufacturers (A Beka, RightStart)

Mardel - Yes, the Christian book store!! They have 2 semi-annual Homeschool/Education Sales and I watch for others throughout the year! In fact, I got our Apologia curriculum 30% off this year!!! YAY!!

Bibliomania (a local Homeschool re-sale/consignment shop. I don’t find too much here for what I need, but sometimes my teacher’s manuals and our A Beka readers for cheap!)

So, there ya have it!! I take several weeks usually to search out the above websites and stores and factor in upcoming sales, coupons, discounts, shipping, etc. before making my final orders. Like I said, it can be a lengthy process, but it’s well worth it for the money I save!

Feel free to share in the comments or leave a link back to your own post!! I love reading all your tips and ideas! I am always open to researching for new curriculum to see if it would work for us! We learn by sharing!! Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,

Annette

Linking up here:

What Joy Is Mine

Far Above Rubies

Teaching What is Good

Raising Mighty Arrows

Holy Spirit Led Homeschooling

Teachable Tuesdays: Learning at the Zoo!!!!

Mr. Mouse staring down a lizard guy. ICK!!!


A couple weeks ago the Hubster was off an extra day, so we took full advantage and traveled around a bit. On Tuesday we visited our local zoo. We always have a good time there. We're members, so we frequent quite often. Tuesday was a little chilly, but beautiful!! We were able to see the NEW Sea Lion exhibit in full swing! We saw a little bit of a show, which was really them training. Our Sea Lions have been visiting the Oklahoma City Zoo for the last year or more while they re-did our exhibit. We used to just have a plain-jane water area with a small overlook. Nothing to write home about that's for sure!

But now...well, you'll just have to trust me because I forgot our camera! Bad blogger!!! I promise I'll take some next time we go and share them with you all. It really is quite neat. We even have an underwater cave you can go into and see them swimming around. Very fun!!!!

These are the few pictures I have from our last visit.

A new set of piglets just born a couple weeks ago.

Aren’t they so cute?!

My middles staring at the illusive Black Bears. They kept growling at them. So. Darn. Cute!!

And this goat!! He was cracking me up! He’s in our petting zoo area and he was just sitting on this stump. Then, I noticed his eyes were closed and simply thought he was soaking up the sun rays. And all of a sudden, his head starts falling slowly, lower and lower and lower…until it completely fell and he jerked it back up again! You know…the sleeping head nod, jerk back up in hopes that no one saw you move?! YEP!! He totally did it! I was laughing hysterically! It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Oh so funny!!

When we decided to Homeschool our kids a few years back, I began thinking about all the field trips we could take. I loved going on field trips in Elementary School and I wanted my kids to have the same experiences…only better!

So, one thing we did was become members of our local zoo so we could go whenever we wanted. It has been so much fun over the past few years to visit and see all the changes.

But, there’s really only so much you can do at a zoo that you’ve visited 15,000 times. How do you keep from getting bored? How can you make the trip even more educational?

I began doing some online searches and found that some of the larger, more well-known zoo’s have links on their sites for kids. You can print off games, puzzles, word searches, etc. But our zoo didn’t have anything like that, so I set out to create my own “Zoo Games” file.

Here are some of the things I came up with…

Word Search 
(I made it in WORD, so I can change it easily if I want!)

BINGO (two ways):

Picture Bingo for my Littles
Word/CharacteristicBingo for my reader

Fill-in info sheets

“Can You Find Me?” sheets 
(zoom in on animals you’ve taken pictures of previously to see if they can spot them again!)

Older Kids download            PreKdownload

“What Am I?” 
(give clues to help them find animals)

Matching sheets 
(where you match animals to their homes/habitat)

Click on the links above to download a free version of each. Feel free to use them in your own trip to the zoo or just as a supplement to your homeschooling journey! You are also welcome to change the Word Documents to fit your own Zoo experience. I change mine often to increase our knowledge of new animals!

Happy Schooling!!

Blessings,

Annette


Linking up with these GREAT parties today!
What Joy is Mine, An Original Belle, Teaching What Is Good, Growing Home, Far Above Rubies, Raising Mighty Arrows, Holy Spirit Led Homeschooling