Mother's Day Celebrations {Free Printables}

{This post is dedicated to my sweet mother, 

who made a beautiful career out of mothering~

 and for that, I will be forever grateful!}

"I can't think of another career more challenging and satisfying than to pour my energies into the daily task of making order out of chaos, music out of noise, communication out of babble, purposefulness out of purposelessness, pointing chubby little wayward feet gently toward the Path, lighting ignorance with knowledge and confusion with understanding."

~Elizabeth Elliott

There are some wonderful printables and ideas for blessing the mother you love~ You MUST click every link... the women who made them are so creative and thoughtful; I'm using some for a little lunch I'm having on Monday for some friends and their mothers: 

 Good Gravy 

 How About Orange 

Whisker Graphics

Lime Lane

Loving Mom: Donna and Sharon's Excellent Adventures #1 {Mother's Day Free Printable}

"A mother is the truest friend we have…”
~Washington Irving

Mom and me making Apple Crisp on Christmas Day

This is my precious mom.  She lives a short 20 minutes away, and we see each other at all the birthdays, holidays and basketball games, but have a hard time making time 
"just for us."  So I have decided to start a little event called,
"Donna and Sharon's Excellent Adventures!"
Once a month, we are going to explore the city of Dallas. 

Our April adventure was to journey south of downtown to the 
Bishop Arts District.

 Coppell, our "Leave it to Beaver" community, is a great place to raise kids,  but we definitely lack  visually stimulating architecture and unique culinary businesses.

Bishop Arts has it ALL! 



We started with lunch at Oddfellows, a modern day diner of sorts, but SOOO much more hip than the Local Diner in Coppell~ and you will swoon over the coffee!!!
We ate the most amazing spinach salad and fried green tomato sandwich~ YES!  Fried Green Tomatoes!!

 Check out the cool outdoor coffee bar~ A DREAM!
The piano is located right outside just in case you get the urge to run your fingers up and down the keys!

After a walk around this little area of precious shops, we stumbled upon this treasure....

The Soda Gallery is the most nostalgic collection of new "old" bottled sodas~ 
Mom and I found great "talking points" for story-telling as we looked around...

.

As we sipped on an Orange Crush, we relived Mom's days as a little girl hanging out with her daddy, J.L. Newsom, at his Cotton Gin.  She would hang out with the guys at the Gin, watch them play dominoes, get a nickel for the soda machine from her daddy and drink an Orange Crush. When I came along, I went to the gin to hang out, too, and drank Orange Crush out of a clear bottle just like the one we're drinking from in the picture.  
But Mom remembered drinking her Orange Crush out of a brown bottle.
Robert, the manager of the shop, heard Mom mention the brown bottle, led us to the back of the store and showed us this vintage Orange Crush in a brown bottle~
 just as mom remembered!  We were delighted!

They have a wonderful collection of vintage pieces throughout the place.  
Take the one you love to the Soda Shop for some terrific story telling and memory making!
You might even consider starting a little event called 
Excellent Adventures with your mom!


{Mother's Day is May 8th}
So here is a little printable from the TomKat Studio so you can get a head start making something special for your mom~  Next week I'm featuring more Mother's Day goodness!

Or if you are really industrious, you might make this by Just Something I Made:

Finding Significance in the Abundant Life

"...I have come to give you the abundant life!"

~Jesus
A few weeks ago, I spent time with some dear friends at my annual "Abundant Life" retreat.  This little retreat started when several of us began to have questions about what we should do with the second half of our lives.  
{the goal for this little blog came out of last years Abundant Life weekend!}
 Every year we meet to reflect on the past year, 
evaluate our current commitments and set goals for the future.


This year was a special event, because it was our 5th anniversary. 
I decided to purchase a little gift for everyone to "mark" our time together.


I found a little shop on Etsy called "Oh Sweetlee Me"  
where you can select a verse to to be hand-stamped on a silver disk.

I chose to have Alely, the shop owner, stamp the reference for our key verse on the necklace:


"The thief has come to kill, steal and destroy, 
but I have come to give you the abundant life."

Not only did the necklaces delight everyone with the scripture reference and sweet pearl, but the packaging!  Could it be any more precious?  

She made a little envelope out of a page from an old book, tucked the necklace inside, added a doily and some twine and even attached the verse!  

Wouldn't a special hand-stamped verse or someone's initials be perfect for 
graduation or Mother's Day?
Find her shop HERE.
Here are some of her sweet Mother's Day ideas in the picture below: