A couple of weeks ago, Mom and I were at our favorite Rose’s Department Store. If you’ve never been, they’re the bomb for finding brand name clothes for less and they have the best prices on flowers.
It’s become something of a tradition for us to go flower shopping for Mother’s Day at Roses and this year was no exception. Imagine our delight when we discovered that all of the hanging baskets were on sale for only $5! Not just the ones with a few scraggly and cheaper flowers in them or ones that had gotten hit by our late-season frosts (they really didn’t have any of those anyway) but these were overflowing with bright beautiful blooms. The geraniums that every seems to want $4 for a little plant were $1.75 (we each bought one) or $5 for a whole pot full with somewhere around 6 or 7 plants in them. Mom was like a little kid picking out her favorites when I told her to pick out 5 for Mother’s Day.
Yesterday, we found a great new (new to us anyway) flea market in Forest City, NC. It was so much fun. It reminded us of the North Carolina we moved to in 1983. We did get there a little late as we had stopped at several yard sales and thrift stores along the way so we had a bit of a race to get to the tables before folks packed up. One lady had nice-size perennials for only $4; another flowering plant for Mom’s garden.
I had offered to take her out for dinner today but after yesterday she proclaimed that she was too tired – our outing lasted 10 hours. Oddly enough, she offered to make meatloaf instead. I even offered that other family tradition of taking her to McDonald’s. (When I was little, I had saved enough money from my snow shoveling to take my Mommy out to lunch – McDonald’s was all I could afford. It’s become a sentimental tradition with us.)
But, rather than McDonald’s or a more fancy dinner out, she wanted to cook. Of course, you won’t hear me refusing homemade meatloaf anytime soon. And, before anyone makes the suggestion – her house, her kitchen. I rarely an offered the opportunity to cook dinner for us.
She did, however, get a bit of her McDonald’s fix this weekend as we started our journies yesterday with breakfast there – my treat.
Today’s been rainy and gray and Mom’s been napping before getting ready to cook. I’ve been working on adding new vintage images to Reusable Art and stumbled upon this charming vintage image. It seems to fit this year’s Mother’s Day theme of flowers and I thought it would be fun to share with everyone here on Blog About Crafts.
It doesn’t truly represent our family because it’s really just me and Mom. I do have a wonderful step-sister but she is much older than me and we don’t see each other.
So, if there are any Moms out there reading this, I hope you have a wonderful day with your children and that all of you remember that it’s the small things that matter. Hopefully, your family also has life-long traditions, no matter how simple and perhaps silly, like our pilgrimage to McDonald’s on Mother’s Day to enjoy with each other.
If anyone would like to use this drawing, please do (just don’t link to it directly). It was from the vintage children’s magazine, The Nursery which was published in 1877 so the image is fully in the public domain.