10 Great Mother’s Day Gift Ideas During the Pandemic
Updated: Apr. 30, 2021This Mother's Day, give mom a thoughtful present with a personal touch—without a drive to the store.
Mother’s Day is on May 9, 2021
This Mother’s Day, it’s going to be a bit tougher to score a traditional gift to show the mom in your life how much you care. While you may not be able to bring mom flowers or spoil her with a fancy brunch at her favourite restaurant, you can still get her a meaningful gift—and deliver it while observing proper social distancing. Here are some thoughtful presents mom will love that don’t require a trip to the store.
A video from family members across the country
Since your extended clan can’t be together to celebrate the wonderful moms in your clan due to social distancing, a Mother’s Day greeting video from everyone is a fun personalized way to make mom feel loved and appreciated. Create a group chat with your siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins and ask them each to send in a thoughtful short video sharing a special memory with your mom, what they love about her, or other heartfelt greetings.
If you’re not super tech-savvy you can easily use Tribute to collect videos and compile them into a love-filled video montage to give as a gift to mom.
Send mom an e-card she’ll love
If you can’t make it to a store to buy a card or don’t have stamps to send a DIY one, the safest option is to send a digital greeting card. Evite Premium Cards has beautiful Mother’s Day cards with loving messages that can be customized and include a personal video. Many e-cards from 123 greetings are animated with music and visuals that are sure to delight mom.
Do you know 78 per cent of people plan on sending a Mother’s Day card? Find out more fascinating facts about Mother’s Day in Canada.
Help mom make an herb garden
Whether mom lives in a small urban apartment or in a home with a yard, you can help her cultivate her green thumb with this online Mother’s Day gift purchase from Chapters Indigo. She’ll be able to grow fresh herbs on any windowsill with the Ecostick herb starter kit that includes rosemary, chives, oregano and basil.
Check out 12 of the easiest foods to grow at home during quarantine.
Treat mom to a future spa treatment
When social distancing is no longer required to flatten the curve of COVID-19, your mom can treat herself to some TLC thanks to the voucher you gave her for a spa treatment. Support your local day spa by inquiring if they offer gift cards—many are offering discounts now. If you can’t find a locally-owned business, purchase a gift card from a national spa franchise such as Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa, which has over 450 locations across North America.
Digitize mom’s favourite recipes
Many handwritten recipes that have been passed down through many generations eventually start to fade or have damage from spilled liquids while cooking. Digitized Recipes will help you preserve the instructions for your mom’s favourite family dishes forever by typing and uploading the recipes to a website. Mom will be easily able to search by ingredient to find the dish she wants to make. To make this gift even more personal use Jumprope to make how-to videos of mom’s favourite recipes. She’ll love feeling like you’re with her in the kitchen when she’s cooking.
These easy cake recipes are worth adding to your collection.
Use old photographs to create a photo album
Now that you find yourself with some extra time on your hands, why not finally make a digital album of cherished childhood and family memories to give to mom on her special day? Mom will love taking a trip down memory lane. If you have access to family photos on negatives and slides you can digitize them with the Kodak Scanza that lets you scan, view, edit, convert, and save old 135, 126, 110, and Super 8 negatives and slides. If you have 35mm film negatives or slides use the Kodak Mobile Film Scanner to digitize them easily on your smartphone. Once your pictures have been digitized, use the Photo Books from Google Photos to create a personalized photo album with the custom text tools.
Keep these safe online shopping tips in mind while browsing for Mother’s Day gifts.
Convert old VHS tapes to digital formats
If your mom always had a video camera at special events, vacations, and ordinary days during your childhood she’ll love having the film digitized to revisit those sweet memories whenever she’s missing you. Preserve precious memories before they’re lost to time and technology by converting them. Costco makes it easy to transfer your old VHS video tapes, film reels and slides to digital formats.
Check out this heartwarming gallery showcasing a mother’s love in the wild.
Make a montage of treasured memories
Curate a montage of videos and photos of special moments with mom to share with her on Mother’s Day. Kapwing is very easy to use. Just upload your images and videos, then arrange them in your desired order. Add a song that mom loves and accompany the visuals with text and stickers. Create a highlight reel of special memories from throughout the years and end the montage with a message of hope that you’re looking forward to making many more beautiful memories together soon.
Read the heartwarming story of what one woman is doing to celebrate Mother’s Day during coronavirus.
Cultivate calm for mom with meditation
Get mom a subscription to Glo, an online yoga, meditation, and pilates platform. Glo features a library of professionally-filmed on-demand classes taught by world-class teachers. Mom can search by the length of time she has available, type of workout she’s looking for, and the type of practice she seeks such as energizing, stress relief and grief management. Get yourself a subscription so that you can meditate with mom from a distance by doing the same course together over a video call on Mother’s Day.
Find out what could happen when you start meditating every day.
Create a playlist of mom’s favourite songs
It’s simple to make mom a playlist of her favourite songs on Spotify. It’s a gift that will keep on giving. She’ll feel understood and loved when she hears the list you’ve curated of her favourite tunes and sweet melodies that make you think of her.
Send mom an audiobook
For the moms who love to unwind with a thrilling mystery novel or classic tale, Audible.ca makes it easy to enjoy all her favourite audiobooks. Choose from adaptations of best sellers like Toronto-based author Ashley Audrain’s must-read The Push or revisit beloved titles like Anne of Green Gables. You can gift a single audiobook, or send an entire library with a year’s subscription. Happy listening! —Erica Ngao
Struggling to find the right words to express just how much your mom means to you? Take inspiration from these beautiful Mother’s Day quotes.
