Posts Tagged: "Mom"

Conversations With My Mother | Keepsake Journal

Queen Darlene - May 4, 2018 - Birthday, Mother's Day

Conversations with My Mother is a keepsake journal for collecting a lifetime of your mother’s stories.

Interview your mother with engaging questions that will encourage her to provide facts about specific aspects of her life and relate rich details about her experiences.

This beautiful journal has places to record dates, write about your mother’s unique life, and attach photos and keepsakes.

You’ll learn so many things you never even knew about your mother.

Not Your Average Journal

Conversations with My Mother prompts all kinds of questions, some I would never have thought to ask.

KinderPerfect | Cards Against Humanity for Parents

Princess Diana - January 3, 2017 - Baby Shower, Birthday, Christmas, Father's Day, Gifts for Me, Mother's Day, Teacher Gifts

Parenting is tough sometimes but it’s also hilarious, especially if you throw in some sarcasm and political incorrectness. KinderPerfect is a card game for adults who enjoy laugh-out-loud humor about the challenges of raising kids.

The game is simple. Each round, one player lays down a red question card and every other player lays down their funniest white answer card.

The person with the funniest answer card wins and gets to keep the red question card. The person who collects the most red cards wins the game!

KinderPerfect Card Game Examples:

Question Card: Before kids, I never thought about _____.
Potential Answer Card: A freezer full of breast milk

Question Card: All I want for Christmas is a day without _____.
Potential Answer Cards: Toddler erections

Question Card: _____ is why I am a failure as a parent.
Potential Answer Cards: Giving him the middle finger behind his back

Totally hilarious, right?!

The card game is similar to Apples to Apples (kid and family friendly) and Cards Against Humanity (sexual and raunchy). KinderPerfect‘s humor is in between so you can play it with adult friends and family and not worry if someone’s going to get offended.

Invite Mom to Afternoon Tea

Princess Diana - May 3, 2016 - Birthday, Christmas, Experiences, Food & Drinks, Mother's Day

More than anything, mothers love to spend quality time with their children.

So when thinking of gifts for her birthday, Mother’s Day or Christmas, a memorable bonding experience for the two of you to do together will always make her happy.

Consider inviting your mother for an Afternoon Tea Experience at a nice hotel, tea room or tea restaurant.

Can you hear it? The sound of a dainty china cup clicking against its saucer.

Can you feel it? The mood of stylish elegance and luxury.

Treat your mother to a lovely and charming afternoon tea with tea trays and service. (At some places, they even have tea butlers!) You and your mother can enjoy sipping tea from delicate teacups while sitting in a room filled with beautiful ambience.

Together, share in meaningful conversation while dining on delicious scones, freshly made sandwiches, and petite pastries!

Add Your Own Message to Hand Stamped Silverware

Princess Diana - April 19, 2016 - $20 or Less, Birthday, Christmas, Congratulations, Father's Day, Going Away, Graduation, Host, Housewarming, Kids, Mother's Day, Retirement, Teacher Gifts, Valentine's Day, Wedding

It’s fun to have our own special silverware to use for eating cereal, ice cream or dessert.

The mundane task of grabbing silverware out of the drawer gets a little bit more exciting as you search for your special spoon or fork.

Last Mother’s Day gift, I gave my mother and mother in-law custom hand stamped silverware with the message: A mother’s love is beyond measure.

Every time they use the spoon to eat with or to stir their cup of tea of coffee, I hope they’ll think of me and know how grateful I am for their love and kindness.

You can make your message sentimental like mine or pick something funny like Cereal Killer for a breakfast spoon.

For a wedding or anniversary present, you can give the gift of His and Her spoons with corresponding messages like: I love you and I love you more or Good morning handsome and Good morning beautiful.

Pregnancy Survival Kit for the Expecting Momma

Princess Diana - March 17, 2016 - Baby Shower

I’m three weeks away from my due date with my second baby. Looking down at my basketball-sized belly and swollen feet, I feel like each and every woman deserves a medal for surviving pregnancy.

A pregnant woman’s body goes through a million changes leading up to baby’s arrival so provide her with lots of support and TLC. If you know a momma-to-be, you can give her a Pregnancy Survival Kit containing some or all of these essential items at the beginning of her pregnancy.

Belly Cream.

The dreaded stretch marks. Prevention is key so she’ll want to start using anti-stretch mark creams starting in the first trimester on her belly, breasts, and butt. This specific cream did wonders for me during both of my pregnancies. I put it on after every shower.

Pregnancy Books.

There are several good ones out there but my go-to pregnancy book is What to Expect When You’re Expecting. It doles out tons of practical advice in bite-sized chunks of information using a Q&A format. There’s a reason why it’s a New York Times bestseller and one of USA Today‘s 25 most influential books of the past 25 years.

Prenatal Vitamins.

They’re vital for fetal and maternal health, and it’s something she’ll have to take every day.

Aden & Anais Swaddle Blankets

Princess Diana - March 8, 2016 - Baby Shower

Besides our cloth diapers, the baby items we used the most for our son were our Aden & Anais Swaddle Blankets.

We received other types of swaddle blankets, but these worked so much better that we used them all of the time. I really liked that they were soft, stretchy, lightweight and breathable.

They’re made of 100% cotton muslin so they get even softer each time you wash them.

Besides using them for swaddling, I used them cover his car seat or to cover me up when I was nursing. In a pinch we used them as burping cloths. My son continued to use them as a sleeping blanket until the age of three!

Old Family Photos Made New on T-Shirts

Queen Darlene - October 22, 2015 - $20 or Less, Birthday, Christmas, Family

What to do with old family photos? Since my grandparents and parents have passed, I have become the keeper of old photos. I have thousands of photos in albums, boxes and drawers. Some are even dated back to the 1800s.

I wanted to create something new from old family photos for my two brothers and myself as a Christmas present. I found a wonderful photo of our parents in their early years of marriage and chose a cute picture of the three of us as young kids.

Picking the photo was no easy task since my mother took hundreds of pictures of her three children. She wanted to capture every moment of us growing up.

I used a local t-shirt screen printing business that transferred the pictures onto t-shirts. Since I gave at Christmas time, I chose long-sleeve t-shirts.

Birthday Card Blitz | 80 Cards for 80 Years

Queen Darlene - September 4, 2014 - Anniversary, Birthday

httpvh://youtu.be/1d8n7zvNISs

My mother was turning 80 years old. After 80 birthdays, how could we make this a unique birthday for her?

I came up with the idea of family and friends sending her birthday cards. That’s nothing new, but for that thoughtful twist the goal was for her to receive 80 cards by her 80th birthday! My brother and I called family and friends to put the birthday card blitz in action.

If you have been following my blog, you know my mother was deaf and I’m all about giving her gifts that are visual experiences. Like the year I popped out of a box.

On another birthday, I treated her and several of her deaf friends to a local diner that cooked fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans just like her mother, my Grandma, used to cook. Afterwards, I took them all to the Science Museum Oklahoma for fun hands-on-experiences. Mom and her friends loved her birthday party!

Mom knew my boss and several of my co-workers so I purchased birthday cards ready with stamps so all they had to do was to address the envelope, sign the card, and mail it. I asked my co-workers, who my mother didn’t know, to wish Mom a Happy 80th Birthday anyway. So that there was a connection, I requested they write in the card they worked with me and something nice about me – anything that would thrill a mother to read about her daughter.

Life Lessons Learned From My Mother | Custom Book

Princess Diana - May 7, 2014 - Birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day

So much of who we are we owe to our parents. Through their words, through their actions, through their examples, they taught us life lessons both large and small that influenced us as children and still influence us as adults. Can I get an “Amen?”

I contacted all of my siblings and asked them to email me the things they learned from our mother growing up. I told them it could be anything as long as it made an impact on who they are today or how they live their lives.

I told them I would use their answers and mine to create a custom book titled “Life Lessons I Learned From My Mother” that we could give to our mother as a Mother’s Day present.

Collaborating with my brothers and sisters on what to include in the book made the present even better because we each came up with life lessons that the others totally agreed with but forgot about. Through teamwork, we really nailed it!

Jump Out of A Box – Surprise Mother’s Day Gift

Queen Darlene - May 6, 2014 - Birthday, Christmas, Experiences, Mother's Day

I lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the late 1980s for almost five years. That was the only time I lived more than a few miles from my mom, and I missed her so much. One year I wanted to surprise her for Mother’s Day by coming home to visit. I wanted to do it by jumping out of a box for Mother’s Day because being me – Queen Darlene – simply walking through the front door is just not how I do things.

My brothers, Harvey and Rodney, got a washing machine cardboard box, wrapped it and left the bottom open so I could crouch inside. My brothers told our mother and grandmother that they were bringing in the gift and that they needed to stay in the bedroom until they were called. That’s when I slipped into the box.

My brothers and I talked about how they would signal me to jump out. All the while my mom and grandmother were in hear shot but being deaf they couldn’t hear us!

Harvey brought them to the den as Rodney filmed the whole thing with his video camera. Harvey thought it would be a great idea to wrap a box of Tide detergent to give Mother the impression she was getting a washing machine. But before she began to open the small gift, my brothers started talking out loud and signing with our mother and grandmother telling them that before Mother opened her gift it would be a good idea to go out to eat first so they could miss the church crowds.

I heard my brothers and started yelling, “You better not leave me in this box while you all go out to eat!”