Happy Mother’s Day! You might think you can get away with a half-hearted effort this year, giving her a cheap card with a terrible pun on it and some flowers from a petrol station. But really, when you think about it, this is the person who literally sustained your life inside of their body. There’s an argument that suggests you probably owe her a little more than some shop-bought flapjack and a cup of tea at your house and, by ‘an argument that suggests’, I mean ‘stop being a cheapskate and show her some bloody appreciation’. Here’s a few ideas that will make the perfect Mother’s Day date.
Before you think of anything else for a Mother’s Day date, you need to have found a killer gift. The key to a good gift on any occasion is think both outside of yourself, and also outside of the cliché gifts. If you’re going to buy a bath bomb or a scented candle, that has to be the secondary gift to the main event. The key to this is either getting something she’s been talking about recently (although this will require you to have been listening) or thinking about what she’s into at the moment and getting something related. Examples of the latter could be anything from a brand new tennis racket if she’s been trying to play more, to a bungee rope if she’s been really pushing the boundaries, all the way to a food processor that she can use whilst baking if that’s what she’s into.
The food section of your Mother’s Day date is the filling in between everything else you do, so it’s important to make it memorable. There are plenty of choices you can make to get this right; you need to decide whether you’re going to lunch or dinner (breakfast is a bit of a push, especially if you don’t live at home) and then decide whether you’re going to go out somewhere or try and cook at home. Personally, I think cooking your own meal holds a great deal more intimacy than going somewhere else as, even if you’re a terrible cook, you can still decide exactly what you want to make and it will feel far more personal. Try your hand at making something you know she likes but doesn’t have often. If you’ve got her that food processor as a gift then this will be a far easier task.
Finding a fun activity for the Mother’s Day date is probably the easiest part, a welcome relief if you’ve been sweating over the food and the gift. The activity can be as a big or as small as you like – the only thing you really need to be conscious of is picking something that you know she likes. A walk around a country house is always a classic, or even something as small as a walk in the countryside somewhere can do the trick. If you want to be a bit more adventurous, you could try out her latest hobby, whether that’s pilates, yoga, kick-boxing or bungee-jumping (seriously, she could be into it.) As long as you know it’s something she would pick for herself, you’re good to go. You could even tie in the activity and the gift; if you’ve bought her a tennis racket, go for a rally; if you went for the food processor, maybe try combining all three element and just cook something up together in the kitchen.
Whatever you end up doing, make sure you’re pulling out all the stops that you can to make sure she has a lovely day. Whether you hate her sometimes or not, your mother literally gave you life, and you forever owe her a debt of gratitude for that.
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