How To Make A Mother's Day Email Card That is NOT Lame

Do you, like me, fear that your children will completely forget Mother's Day? It's not that I think that my husband will forget (okay, fine, yes, I do think he would forget Mother's Day if he wasn't reminded several times beforehand), it's that I think he'll forget to tell the kids that it's Mother's Day.


So then I turn into that obnoxious person who reminds all parties in my vicinity that it is, indeed, Mother's Day on Sunday and that "I can't wait to see what you made for me!"


Yes, I actually say that. Shut up.


This year, the Microsoft Windows Team helped me out in my quest to educate the uninformed members of my household by sending this adorable little package in the mail:

Boxes arriving in the mail are like catnip to my children, so I have conveniently left it out on the kitchen counter and other high-traffic areas where any and all parties can be intrigued, tantalized, and even possibly motivated to read the contents. Highly unorthodox, I know. But the contents include a clever folding instruction sheet on how to use Paint to make a kick-ass Mother's Day card for moi, along with some very cute "paper embellishments."

Adorable, right?

It is at this point that I have to remind myself that I have SONS, not daughters. No amount of leaving this kind of thing around is going to inspire them to create a card for me. They will wait until the last minute and throw something together with a #2 pencil, some lined notebook paper, and a bit of dirt.

I can live with that. ...As long as it is accompanied by kisses & hugs. They are my spawn, after all.


However, I can't live with sending that to my mom. She started throwing away my dirty #2 pencil last-minute creations years ago! And, besides that, she is the most amazing, loving, giving grandmother ever to walk the Earth, so I want to make something special for her.


With the help of SkyDrive (which if you are not taking advantage of, well, you are just silly—it is 7GB of free online storage that you can access from any device... even your iPhone!), I am going to put together a card for her that is also a photo album that she can download the pictures from.

I use an iPhone and a Windows phone, so I can upload any photos I've taken on either phone to my SkyDrive account via the app I have on both of them. I uploaded photos from my phone dating back to our last Mother's Day together, which was spent in England at Amberley Castle. (Yes, it was the best Mother's Day ever, thank you for asking.) And, because the camera is so good on smart phones these days, I took photos of pictures in my wedding album to upload, too. Awesome, right?

I'm a Photoshop girl, so I skipped the Paint program instructions and whipped together this for my album cover, which I mailed to my phone so it would automatically resize it for me:

Now, here's what I did on my iPhone:

Now all I need to do is go to the SkyDrive site, via your hotmail account, and select the folder you just created. On the right-hand side you will see a sharing tab where you can select who you would like to share your folder. A little dialog box pops up and you can write a note to go along with the "card" that will be emailed to your mom. (FYI: I like doing the share on my computer, rather than in the app, because the app doesn't let you write a note when you share an item.)

I hope you have a great Mother's Day and enjoy sharing your photos with the person who probably wants to see them the most!