It’s about 10 days before every holiday that demands something cute, sentimental and homemade be sent thousands of miles to grandmas and grandpas that I realize I have failed. (mail takes roughly two weeks to get where it is going for us)

I am, or at least have been, the woman who shops or makes or bakes or books at the very last minute. It’s not that I don’t love my family and want to make sure their special moments aren’t memorable. In the end, my short-term memory for long-term planning seems to have been the most significant casualty of pregnancy and motherhood.

So, when the newly installed holiday alarm clock went off on my lap top last week, I figured our Mother’s Day present to the grandmas and GGs this year was that they’d get something from us BEFORE the actual holiday:)

The tiny person’s current obsession with flowers and an everlasting love of paint made for the perfect combination to create fun nature stamp cards that blossomed with a flower centerpiece featuring our favourite bloom of all – her.

Here’s what you need:

- Flowers and leaves from your garden.
- Craft or construction paper
- Photos of your kiddos that can be cut in the shape of flowers
- Tempera paint
- Paint brushes
- Craft glue

Directions:

1. Pick out some photos of your kids. If you are digital, you can upload them over a London Drugs photo centre, pick them up and even pay for them in-store within an hour or so. I love this service.

2. Head out to the garden and start picking. We found that soft, wide, flexible leaves worked best. Flowers with big petals that are easily made flat on a piece of paper, dandelions are great too.

3. Put just a bit of tempera paint on a plate or palate so that your kiddos can use it like a stamp pad

4. Get your paper, flowers and paint and get stamping

5. Stamp two long leaves on the paper to form the base of a flower and let your stamp art dry for about 30 minutes or so, depending on how much paint the kiddos used.

6. Cut your pictures into the shape of a flower.

7. Glue them on between the leaves and draw in a stem.

8. Write your greeting on the cards and send them off to someone special.