Do you guys have any plans for this upcoming Mother’s day? Last year, my first official mother’s day as a mama, I spent with Maya but away from Dan. This year we are all around, and I have made my request very clear: a sleep in, followed by breakfast in bed, plus a handmade craft from my little lady. Pretty much heaven to me.
For my own Mum, I will take her out for a nice tea or something, but I wanted to have a gift for her from Maya. We will make a card, but since Maya is only 1.5, we aren’t really at the point yet of making a nice handmade gift. So? I jumped on the photo gift bandwagon for this year: a mother’s day photo mug.
There are a variety of places where you can go to get photos put onto a product – be it a phone case, mug, mouse pad, canvas, etc. Staples offer this service through their Copy & Print centre. I’m a huge Staples user, since there is one very close to our house and we don’t own a printer. Honestly – the folks at my local Copy & Print know me by name. Ha! They have a bunch of photo gift options and I was tempted by the custom deck of cards (fun idea, hey?), but since my parents already have a zillion decks at our cottage, I didn’t think it was the most practical. A mug on the other hand, despite being a more “cliche” photo gift, seemed perfect.
There are a few different mugs you can choose from – regular, latte, travel mug, etc. – and different photo sizing and placement options. I chose to do a full wrap regular mug, but I got a bit more custom when it came to the uploaded photo. Instead of uploading one photo to wrap the mug, I designed a collage in PicMonkey. I used the ‘design’ option when opening PicMonkey (meaning you choose the size of canvas you want), kept the background white, and then overlayed my photos and “maya love’s nana” text. You put in the overlays by clicking on the butterfly tab, and then click “your own” at the top to upload your photos.
I deleted the collage already and can’t remember the dimensions that you need for the mug – ugh, dumb, sorry! – but you want it to be a fairly long rectangle. If the pixel size isn’t quite right when you upload it onto the Staples site (ie. if your photos are running off the edges or something), then you can re-size in PicMonkey (there is a “resize” option in the first tab).
One of the cute options with the mugs is that you can choose an interior colour. Fun, hey? I went with the light pink as it went with the whole mother’s day/heart vibe, but that yellow was a close second.
A few days later it was ready to pick up at my local Staples, and it turned out beautifully! It really is a sweet little gift.
It came in a cardboard box, making it easy to wrap up. I wrapped it in kraft paper, and then let Maya have a few foam heart stickers to place wherever the little Picasso in her wanted to.
It’s funny – I’m totally having to sit back and let her do her thing when it comes to crafts and stuff. The perfectionist in me wants to say “don’t put all the stickers on top of each other!”, and “colour in the lines!”, and make her use the colours that I like, but then I have to remind myself to step back and let the girl do her thing.
Once she placed her stickers on (she wanted to keep going with more, but I did a quick switch to a colouring book – you gotta know when less is more!), I wrapped some ribbon around and used the blank corner to write the To/Love.
It’s a small little gift, but a really sweet and personal one. I have a feeling my Mum is going to love it. Oh, and it totally doesn’t break the bank either at $12 + tax.
If you want to have a look at this and the other photo gifts Staples does, head on over here.
What do you guys have up your sleeve for Mother’s day? Any plans? Any gift ideas? Maya’s daycare is hosting a mother’s day tea + concert this afternoon. I have no idea what the “concert” is going to include (how do you get 1.5 and 2 year olds to sing all together?) but it should be hilarious and cute!
*Disclosure: Staples gifted this mug to me for free, but honestly I would have paid for it if they hadn’t been so kind! It’s a really sweet gift idea for less than $20!