Mother's Day Morning - May 12, 2013

I will admit, I was a little disappointed on Valentine's Day. I usually don't have very high expectations for the holidays. It seems like it is more about the kids and less about the adults. And to a certain extent, I hate buying in to the over-commercialized Hallmark holidays that force you to celebrate your love on one particular day or your mother on the another. However, it is nice to do something and if a special day is not set aside for it, then it is difficult to remember to celebrate on your own. To appease my own disappointment, I ended up buying myself two pairs of shoes (on sale of course - they were $14 each on 6pm). I also bought myself some clearance roses from Smith's (which died shortly thereafter - probably why they were on clearance). But it wasn't Brandon's fault - neither of us do much or make that big of a deal for birthdays and holidays. We had set a precedent either because we didn't want to waste money or we were too lazy. But really, is there ever enough money?

Well, for Mother's Day, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would not be disappointed for this holiday. By golly, I am raising a very assertive (read: challenging) four year old and just sacrificed my body (and my mind, a bit) to give birth to a new baby boy. I mean, I know - lots of other women do this and many do it better. But that doesn't mean it isn't hard or doesn't totally suck sometime. So yes, we all deserve a holiday to get a little more attention and perhaps some pampering or an extra gift or two.

So my plan was to let Brandon know exactly what I wanted. So no surprises, but also no disappointment. And no cringing if he went overboard on a gift that was way too expensive (something out of our budget probably stresses me out more than nothing at all). There were no subtle or not so subtle hints. It went like this, "I want a new electric hand mixer." Mine had died and it wasn't very good to begin with and any time I needed to make a dessert like chocolate roll for a birthday, I had to borrow my neighbor's electric hand mixer from across the street. But not just any mixer. I did research and found the most reasonably priced one with the best reviews on Amazon (I'm all about value) and put it on my Amazon wishlist and sent the link to Brandon. Easy.

Next, flowers. But not just any flowers. I didn't want expensive florist flowers. A bouquet from Trader Joe's or Sprouts would be just fine, thank you very much. They have lovely flowers that are very reasonably priced. Plus, we have lots of our own vases.

For breakfast, triple strawberry shortcakes. No cereal for this girl. I even gave Brandon the recipe and bought all the ingredients.

So here is how it all went down:

The "gift wrap" was a little last minute but that's okay. It was very resourceful of Brandon to use an old wedding gift bag.

Brandon tried his hand at some floral arranging. I love Japanese irises and calla lilies (I really love any/all flowers). Thoughtful? Yes. Unique? Very. Unfortunately, the irises didn't last long. Lesson learned for next time.

My lovely hand mixer. There are 290 watts for about $25. I wanted me some power. And why would I spend double or triple on some pricey Kitchenaid or Cuisinart with less watts. Me, I'm practical. Someday, I will get a Bosch or Kitchenaid stand mixer but for now, this will suffice. I haven't started making my own bread yet. But we did use this to make my triple strawberry shortcake.

These weren't on my list but they were on sale at Target for $12 and I had a $5 off coupon so they were only $7! Did I need them? No. But I wanted them so I bought them and threw them in my Mother's Day gift bag. Nice work, Brandon.

And there is my triple strawberry shortcake. I helped Brandon make them. Who says you can't have dessert for breakfast. Good thing our church starts at 11am so we had time for all this.