My mother has always made a really fun and (often a really big) to do out of everyone's birthdays. Not just my Dad & my sister, but also my aunts and uncles and close friends have had serious birthdays courtesy of my mother. As is the case with a lot of people who work hard for other people, she hasn't had many serious birthdays of her own. So this year she had a milestone birthday, though to be polite I wont say which milestone. ;) So even though I am a couple of hours away, I made a bunch of treats and decorations and we all drove down to my parent's house to throw her a cute lunch party. I wanted to give her a sweet gift she'd use all the time and remember her little party by - and she adores little trinket boxes. So my (amazing) husband picked one out and we had it engraved with the name the kids call her (Yaya, Greek for Grandma).
But what to put inside it?! It's not like she needs anything really, so the kids each made up a birthday wish for her. I wrote the wishes on small pieces of double sided scrapbooking paper and rolled them up so they'd fit into tiny little glass jars with cork stoppers. These ones came with tiny beads inside for an unrelated project, so I emptied them out and used them as little 'message in a bottle' bottles. She loved them, but decided that just like when you make a wish on your birthday candle and you can't tell the wish for fear it wont come true, she can't open the wishes until her next birthday, just in case reading them jinxes the chances of them coming true.