Mono Monday - My First Mother's Day

I celebrated my first Mother's Day two years ago, and asked my boyfriend to take some photos of us to celebrate. I've shared these photos before (in color) here. It's interesting what a difference saturation (or lack thereof) can make. It completely changes a photo, makes you really see the raw emotions being conveyed in that moment.

This is probably my favorite picture ever taken of us. Pure joy.

Don't forget to hop over to Supermom to see what the other Mono Monday participants are sharing for Mother's Day!

Homemade Mother's Day Gift

Mother's Day is just around the corner, and I decided that I wanted to have Cooper make something for my mom. I told him we were going to be making a present for Gram and he got so excited!

I found a idea on Jenn's blog, Delicious Ambiguity, for some cute, homemade flowers in a vase, that even my two and a half year old could do.

Start by painting some colored construction paper. We used roller paints and heavier scrapbook paper, but you could use anything you have on hand.

Then fold each piece of paper into strips, fold each strip into thirds and staple three strips together. Glue pictures of your child to each "flower," and attach a pipe cleaner to the back. My flowers were a bit heavy since I used a heavier scrapbook paper (it's what I had on hand), so I ended up twisting five pipe cleaners together.

For the vase, glue some tissue paper to a plastic cup.

Put some clay or playdough into the bottom of the cup, stick the pipe cleaner into the playdough, tie a ribbon around the vase, and there you go! A simple, cute Mother's Day project for Grandma!