Top 5 Mother's Day Gifts for the Budget-Minded

The job of "mother" is the most important one there is. It is also the most underpaid. For Mother's Day why not go out of your way to make her day special! With my list of the top 5 Mother's Day gifts for the budget-minded consumer you don't have to spend a lot of money to make mom's day memorable!

1) Punch Card

Filling a coupon book up with pages of predetermined favors is nice but an even better idea is a punch card. Not everyone will have the same ideas about what coupons they would like to receive in a coupon book. In most cases at least some coupons unused. Make a punch card instead.

Find a free piece of white cardboard (like the kind that come off a pack of pantyhose) and make a punch card stating that this card is good for a certain amount (you decide the amount!) of "because I said so" favors. Then put the same number of punch spots along the top for punching with a standard hole-punch. This way your mom gets to decided when and how she wants to use her generic favors. I guarantee she will use each punch you give her!

2) Family Picnic

A day in the park with my kids and my hubby is as close to heaven as it gets around here. Especially if there is fried chicken and didn't have to cook it! Take me to a park I haven't been to before and I am even happier! You can have the kids pitch in with the meal planning, shopping, and preparation. How proud they will be when they can say, "I made the potato salad Mom!"

3) A Home Made Meal and a Knock Out Dessert!

Set Mom down in the living room with a good book or a movie and serve her a meal like she was in a restaurant. You can play this up as big as you like with hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and even a pre meal nibble of some fresh bread and butter! The personalized "service" you give her will be as much fun for her as it will for you. Serve her meal on good china and a cloth napkin for added flair! Follow the meal with an amazing dessert - a chocolate fountain feast!

Chocolate fountains can be rented relatively cheaply (we bought ours at a local outlet store for $20). You can buy a few bags of chocolate chips when they are on sale at Christmas time and freeze them to use next Mother's day in a fountain. Provide small bowls of nibbles like dried fruit, marshmallows, pretzels, and cookies for a treat that is as much an experience as it is a meal!

4) Kitchen Garden

One year my mother was ill and did not get to put in her usual garden. As mother's Day rolled around she became a bit melancholy about the whole thing. My sister and I went out and found a few old half barrels that were in the shed and filled them with soil. Then we went to the local nursery and picked up a few packs of seed and a few live plants. Mom was thrilled! She got to have a small garden that year after all! We set the barrels by the back door leading off the kitchen and she had fun planting onions, lettuce, radishes, herbs, and other necessities for her kitchen.

5) Fortune Cones

One nice snack to make is to take the sugar type Ice cream cones and drop tiny love notes in them. Then take home made cookies and use melted chocolate to "glue" them to the top of the cone to make it look as if they are ice cream. When your Mother breaks into the cone she gets to read her love notes! You can also fill them with poems (extra points if you write them yourself) or just one line of a long list of things that start with "I love you because ..."