The best birthday gifts you can make are those that show you know something personal and special about the person.

My mother is celebrating her 75th birthday this year. She is at that age where finding special birthday gifts is quite difficult. My sisters and I have decided to have a party for mom and to invite friends and relatives. As we have been planning it we have been trying to come up with ideas for special birthday gifts that mom can enjoy.

One of my sister’s that is always very practical was trying to think of things that mom needs. Mom lives in a very small apartment in a senior apartment building. She no longer has a garden or flowering plants, so she does not need any gardening supplies. When she had that hobby we were always able to find special birthday gifts that she could use in the yard. Mom also has one meal provided for her each day at a communal dining room at the apartment complex, so her baking and cooking needs are much less than they had been. As we talked we decided that mom’s needs were basically met already.

My older sister stated that she had seen mom embroidering dish towels. She is going to make a trip to the craft store and see what she can find for special birthday gifts from herself and her daughters that will include embroidery supplies. She thought she would also shop for high quality dish towels. This way mom will be able to embroider the towels and can in turn give them as special birthday gifts to her friends.

My other sister and I decided that we would go shopping together to see what we could find as our special birthday gifts. We started at the department stores, but did not see anything that we thought qualified as special birthday gifts. As we were shopping I told my sister that I wanted to stop at the book store to see if they had a novel that I had been looking for. While we were in the book store I noticed a section that had books for gifts. They had several devotionals as well as poetry books. They also had cloth bound books that were designed to have people write their life story. Each was set up differently, but the one I purchased was called Mom Tell Me About…, the inside of the book was like a daily planner. Each page was for a day in the month and had a question at the top of the page. The rest of the page was blank lines to write the answer to the question. The questions were designed to allow the person to tell their life story. They also had very nice pen sets with different color inks. We thought the book and pen set would create the special birthday gifts that we had been looking for.

The party will be next week. I am looking forward to seeing relatives and friends of my mother. I am also anxious to have mom fill out the pages of the book we are giving her.