Four Easy Steps to a Unique Mother’s Day Gift She Will Love

mother's day

Mom! The woman to whom you owe so much…who you have known your whole entire life…who you have absolutely NO idea what to get for Mother’s Day…

No worries! We’ve got you covered. Just follow the instructions below and you’re guaranteed to give a gift your mother will love.

YOUR MOTHER’S DAY GIFT SHOULD BE AS UNIQUE AS YOUR MOM

The Internet is filled with more lists of “Top 10 Mother’s Day Gifts” than you could possibly ever read. In fact, Googling that very phrase delivers over 10.3 million results.

The problem with those lists?

They’re generic. Like one-size-fits-all clothing, those Mother’s Day gifts don’t actually fit anyone very comfortably.

How could they?

They don’t know your mother and they don’t know you.

They key to finding a Mother’s Day gift that will knock her socks off is to make it as personal as possible.

FINDING A GREAT MOTHER’S DAY GIFT STARTS BY DECIDING WHAT YOU WANT THE GIFT TO SAY

Frequent readers of this blog have heard me say before that there’s a language of gift giving.

Sentimental gifts seem to gush, “You mean a great deal to me. This gift is to remind you of the great times we’ve had…”.

On the other hand, obligatory gifts tend to speak in a much more formal tone and say, “This gift is bland. You will neither love it or hate it, and there’s a high chance you will regift it in the near future.”

As you search for a Mother’s Day gift, think about the feeling you would like the gift to communicate. This sentiment becomes the foundation for the gift and can provide valuable inspiration.

Here are a few sentiments to get you started:

“I’m glad you’re my mom.”
“Thanks for always being there for me.”
“I love you, even though we don’t always get along.”
“I miss you and wish I could be there to help you more.”

There’s no right or wrong answer, so be honest with yourself.

SELECT A GIFT FOR YOUR MOTHER THAT EXPRESSES YOUR INTENDED SENTIMENT

Identifying the sentiment you would like the gift to convey serves several important purposes:

Allows you to take the entire universe of potential gifts and help you know where you should start looking
Enables you to evaluate possible gifts
Ensures that the intention you set when you first realized Mother’s Day was coming up is met

To help illustrate this, let’s assume you and your mother are close and truly enjoy each other’s company. You might want the gift to say, “I’m grateful we always have fun together.”

WHOOOOOOOOSH!!!!

That’s the sound of the possible gift landscape shrinking down to a much smaller subset of possibilities. When this happens, it’s a wonderful thing because it helps you know where to look for a gift, thereby saving you lots of time and energy.

To get closer to gift ideas, you might think about:

Activities you both enjoy doing
Memories of fun times
Laughs you’ve shared
Possible places you’ve expressed interest in visiting

With these considerations, you can start to entertain possible gifts:

Activities you both enjoy doing—> mani/pedi; discovering a new restaurant; yoga; shopping
Memories of fun times —> seeing a musical; searching for the best donuts
Laughs you’ve shared —> tickets to see a favorite comedian; a Netflix gift certificate with comedies highlighted
Possible places you’ve expressed interest in visiting —> wine tasting at a winery in a nearby town

In contrast, if the sentiment you wanted the gift to communicate was, “I miss you and I wish I could be there to help you more”, your list of possible gifts would look much different. It might include a lawn mowing service or several hours of technical support for when her computer won’t cooperate.

MAKE THE GIFT GIVING AS MEMORABLE AS POSSIBLE

Sometimes, once people select a gift, they breathe a sigh of relief and think they’re done.

And they are…sort of.

After the gift is selected, there’s a tremendous opportunity to make the giving of the gift as memorable as possible.

Continuing with the example above:

Giving a gift certificate for a mani/pedi? Include a fun pair of flip flips that mom wouldn’t buy for herself
Planning a day of wine tasting? Add a link to a video of the California raisins commercial and a few wine corks.
Attach the Netflix gift card to a list of favorite movies you’ve seen together and wrap in some comics from the newspaper…or printed off the internet

It doesn’t have to be complicated or take a lot of time—just let your creative juices flow and have some fun.

CONNECT THE GIFT, GIFT GIVER AND GIFT RECIPIENT FOR A TRULY SPECIAL GIFT

The last step to giving a truly special Mother’s Day gift is to personalize it. This is the step that makes the gift unique because when you add this “touch,” it reinforces that this particular gift could only have come from YOU.

In the above the example, the intimacy of the gift makes it easy. If you gave a mani/pedi gift certificate, you might include a photograph of the two of you having your nails done from your wedding. Seeing the picture would bring back the shared memory of that day, and the gift certificate would give the two of you an opportunity to make a new memory.

EASY MOTHER’S DAY GIFTS DON’T HAVE TO TAKE MUCH TIME

To show you how simple the four steps to a wonderful, memorable Mother’s Day gifts are, here’s one last example.

Let’s say your mom is the type who’s always in the kitchen, busy preparing meals and taking care of other people.

The sentiment for your Mother’s Day gift might be “You deserve a break Mom!”
You might decide to gift a P.F. Chang’s gift card because she went there once a while back and told you how much she enjoyed it.
To make the gift more memorable, you could wrap the gift card in a take-out box filled with uncooked rice and tie some chopsticks to the top.
Now to make it extra special, go that extra step and make a connection by printing out the menu (easily found online!) and circling a dish you think she might enjoy and expressing WHY you think she would enjoy it.

Suddenly that very ordinary gift card that might’ve been tucked into a greeting card has been transformed.

Now, it’s a fun and memorable gift that lets your mom know you recognize all she does, plus reminds her of how much you love a dish she makes. What mom wouldn’t love that?

By taking a few extra minutes to make your gift memorable and reinforce a shared connection, you’re guaranteed to make Mom’s heart smile!