My Favorite Things... Mother's Day Edition!

Today, in honor of my mother on this wonderful Mother's Day, I thought I'd do a special edition of My Favorite Things! In this post, I'll feature something in each of the Food, Wine, & Mod Podge categories from my mom!

My Apron



This apron is truly one of my favorite things because of the story behind it. My mom has almost an identical apron in style, but in blue. This apron was her mother's, my grandmother, and it is the most practical apron ever. It's got a huge pocket (great for my camera!) as well as a dish towel sewed right into the waist. Absolutely practical in every way! And then it's cinched at the waist so it's adorable on.

My mom knew I loved this apron, so she offered to make me one of my own for my birthday one year. Since she only had her own apron as a guide, she pulled in my father's mother, my other grandmother, to help figure it out. My grandma is a farm woman who grew up in Iowa and has been sewing all her life, so she's pretty good at making things without a pattern. The two of them worked so hard to make this beautiful apron for me, and it is so special.



I wear it nearly every time I cook, and every time it makes me smile! This is so special because the original design is my mother's mother's, and then my mom and my father's mother helped bring it to life for me! I don't think there's a more special object to bring up on Mother's Day!



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Anniversary Wine Bottle Lamp

My mom is the queen of meaningful gifts. This is actually a trait that I treasure in myself which she taught me. There's giving somebody a gift that's just a gift, and there's giving someone something that touches their heart, makes their eyes sparkle, or makes them smile from ear to ear. I've been blessed to have received many gifts along the years from her that fit into this category (see apron story above!) but another that comes to mind is the wine bottle lamp she had made for me.

She bought a lamp that looked essentially like white christmas lights strung through the bottom of a wine bottle as decoration for her house at some home store one time. Though it was never an actual wine bottle, it was just for looks, that got her thinking that maybe she could have a special wine bottle made into a light as a gift. Having no glass cutting tools of her own, she actually did research and hunted someone down that was willing to do this for her!

Now to where this story comes to me. I had been holding on to the bottle from the wine that Chris and I shared for our first dating anniversary. This is a bottle of 2003 Trefethen Chardonnay, and it's something I hold dear to my heart. Well, she took this bottle of mine, which was just sitting there collecting dust, and had it made into a beautiful light!





This is a great addition to our home, and now something we can cherish forever.

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and finally....

My Creativity

I owe so much of my creativity to my mom. She always helped create fun new things, whether it was getting consumed with scrapbooking, splatter painting my bedroom walls, or nailing patterns into tin for a vintage kitchen cabinet redo. She always taught me that if you get an idea in your head, you can always figure out how to do it.

Even now, even though she's miles away, she helps out whenever possible with my creativity. About a year ago, I decided to make a wine label decoupage, and to help out with this massive effort, she saved all the labels of all of the wines she and my dad drank and mailed them to me. Also, just recently, she helped with the great Mod Podge Filing Cabinet Overhaul, shown in a post just a month or so ago. I can only imagine what projects we'll come up with next!

So thank you, Mom, for being such an influence in all the parts of my life!