The best gifts, the ones we want to keep forever, are not the most expensive. The best gifts are homemade and from the heart.
I recently celebrated a birthday. My two girls have been away at summer camp and they came to meet me at some nice hot springs nearby. They came bearing homemade gifts not unlike the ones they had made starting in preschool. These are my favorite kinds of gifts, starting from the baby handprints, then the macaroni art and the clunky clay pots. I love them all and have tried to keep most of them.
But now they are growing up and their handwork is more grownup and more beautiful every year. They spent a week hand-marbling this paper, then painting on it and writing a message inside that made me cry. I told them I wanted to keep this card for the rest of my life and they said they’d bury me with it. 
The bottle is also a treasure. Although it originally stood for “Snapple” they said the embossed “S” stands for Susan. My older girl decorated it with images of strong, beautiful women, and they picked flowers from their camp garden.
Aside from their presence on my birthday, these were the best presents ever.
Those are by far the best presents of all. They just mean so much! Glad you had a wonderful birthday
oh yes. Homemade has so much love in it. My teenagers now want to spend money to buy me gifts, but I keep asking for homemade. They’ve lost their passion for making me crafts. I wouldn’t mind if they still continued to do that all their life!
What strikes me most about these gifts is that your daughters *know* you so well…perhaps that’s the greatest gift
Homeade gifts are the best! Beautiful. I hope you had a wonderful birthday!