Alright, you screwed up. Despite having 364 days of the year to go out there and get your wife something special to show her just how much you and your children appreciate her, you failed to get that one special thing.

That’s fine. You’re a man, and you have experience rushing for these last minute gifts. You know where to get flowers. You can make a reservation at your wife’s favorite restaurant. You know how to handle this. What you may not know to do is some type of craft or something with the kids to make it look you had this all planned and not just you scrambling.

For starters, don’t do breakfast in bed. Just don’t. This is going to create a mess in the kitchen, and it is going to make a mess of the bedroom. The last thing you want to do is spend the rest of Mother’s Day cleaning a kitchen and washing sheets.

Instead, get the kids together and do an easy craft. Really, all you need is a piece of paper, a pencil, and a marker. If you can get some cute wallpapers, in light shades, all the more better – you won’t have to worry about designing it later.

What you want to do is put your kid’s hands-on the piece of paper, and get them to use their pointer fingers, middle fingers, and thumbs to create a heart shape.

You then trace it in pencil, and you go back over it in marker. If your kids can write them names on it, all the better (except if they are too old that this is no longer cute).

If you want bonus points, scan the piece of paper to your computer, save it to Shutterfly/Snapfish, get hit printed out at your local Walgreens or Walmart, and grab a frame from Michaels. At a minimum, this will look like you spent the time and effort to do something special.

More than that, you know you want to do something special for your wife on Mother’s Day. She is great and deserves it. Give her something special to cherish the moment, and then go out and get the flowers, make the reservations, and get that small gift you know she has had her eye on for a while.