What to Do With Your Mother's Day Gift

I love, let me repeat LOVE, the gifts my children make me. Sometimes it can be a little challenging to appropriately display and/or enjoy them. Here are some possibilities:

• If you are as lucky as me and your child brought home a stunning silhouette already sized to 8x10 by his teacher, frame it!
• If your drawing/photo/poem is two dimensional but not of standard size, find a photo mat or floating frame. 
• If your gift is 3 dimensional and/or perishable, take a photo of it, with your child holding it. You might want to do this with the 2-dimensional gifts mentioned above as well, just so you have a back-up copy and can store it in your fire safe. (That's not just me, right?) 

While you'll want to admire your framed gift hanging in the hallway or your 3D gift on your dresser for the coming weeks, months, or even years, there may come a point at which you are running out of wall space or the sculpture on the dresser gets tough to dust. At that point you will have two options: a) store gift in box of keepsakes in attic/basement/closet/garage to treasure when your children are grown or b) discretely dispose of gift and treasure that photo I so wisely advised you to take. 

A thought for those photos you'll be taking of your gifts: Purchase an inexpensive 4x6 photo album - think dollar store, walmart, dollar bin at target. Slide the photos of your gifts. (You could include just Mother's Day gifts if you like the idea of yearly progression, or any gift/drawing/note from your child - even snap a photo of the dandelion he picked for you at the park!) Look through this album when you're feeling nostalgic or when your living room is a disaster and you need to be reminded of your child's angelic side. As an alternative, your could keep a slide show of these images on your computer, phone, or tablet. (But don't forget to back them up!)

Image courtesy madelinetosh