You know, when I was younger I used to hand-make my mom a card for Mother’s Day and that would be the only thing I’d give her. My mom is the type of person who doesn’t really appreciate store-bought gifts and she is extremely practical. Even if I were to buy her a practical gift, she would think it’s a waste of money. That’s the typical Asian mom for you, haha. My family doesn’t really celebrate anything that much, and Mother’s Day isn’t an exception. Now that I’m older (age is always relative, of course), I admit I don’t spend much time making hand-made cards anymore, but that’s because now I choose to spend the time making other presents for my mom.

When I was young, it didn’t seem like my mom appreciated my hand-made cards that much. I think one year I didn’t make her one at all because I never got around to making one. Surprisingly, my mom asked me why I didn’t make her a card that year. So after that I realized that she did appreciate the little things I made for her, even if she didn’t show it much, and I continued giving her cards every year.

Now that I’m 22, I’ve learned to appreciate and love my mom much more than when I was 13 years old. It seems cliche but you really do learn to appreciate your parents much more when you get more mature. I mean, I still loved my parents as a teenager, but I got in way more arguments with them and didn’t really see too far into the future. Then once I get over that hump, I started to see how old my parents are getting and how much they’ve done to make me happy, and the fact that I want them to be happy as well.

So although holidays aren’t the only day to appreciate your family, I never miss the opportunity to participate in the festivities and show ’em that I care. This year for Mother’s Day, I gave her a cute card and I made her a Sudoku book & a little book for grocery lists.

My mom loves Sudoku puzzles. She finished the little paperback puzzle book she had and likes to work on them at work when there’s downtime. I decided making a Sudoku book would be great for her. I chose to bind the book using rings so that it’d be easier to flip back pages and remove or add new pages as needed. I cut out felt for the lettering on the cover.

The front and back covers are made of cardboard, and I blanket-stitched colored felt over the cardboard pieces. I added a little pencil holder in the back cover, haha. The Sudoku puzzles were printed off of the internet. Since there were about 25 pages to be cut in half and 50 pages to be hole-punched, my hole-puncher and scissors at home seemed a little inefficient. Since I had to go to school anyways, I went to look for a paper slicer and hole-puncher and the library, and they had them! Wish I discovered that a long time ago. The hole-puncher was a commercial one, so it could hole-punch a whole stack of papers at once.

I also experimented with making a mini-book with a cardboard cover thanks to this tutorial. It’s a pretty awesome way to use your cardboard; you should try it! It’s a great way to recycle scrap papers as well. I made her a little book for grocery lists because she’s always forgetting about what she was supposed to buy at the market.

If I could do something differently, I would have made sure my stitching along the edges would be more uniform and evenly spaced. I practiced my embroidery a bit, as you can see. I’m definitely a newbie at it, but I was relieved when my mom didn’t have any trouble reading what the letters were, LOL. She seemed really happy when I gave these to her, so I’m super happy too.