Just a reminder that Mother's Day is coming up on Sunday, May 11. If you're planning on sending a gift, flowers, or a card, it's about time to get them in the mail. For the record, I have never met a Mom that didn't treasure a pretty bracelet given to her by her son. All of these things are positively fantastic for a traditional Mom, but we've got a lot of WoW Moms that might like something a little different.

Even as I get older, I've found that my Mom, and other Moms around me still enjoy homemade gifts. Our Thursday column, World of Warcrafts, has given us some excellent ideas on some very special gifts. Last week Shelbi showed us how to make a lovely Basket of Flowers. I'm also fond of her wonderful guide for making Super potions. I'm pretty sure my Mom would like these (even more than the paperclip necklace she treasured for years.)

You may also consider World of Warcraft T-shirts, or even paid play time. If you don't have a lot of money to dedicate to Mother's Day Shopping, you can give your WoW Mom the gift of playtime or even something special in-game. For those of you with less fantasy-oriented Mom's, here are some easy links to get gifts online:

Flowers

• 1-800-Flowers
• FTD
• Teleflora

Food:

• Ethem M Chocolates
• Harry and David
• Godiva

Remember, you only get one Mom (ok, so in modern families, you may have 2 or 3), and Mother's Day only comes once a year. Make it count! What's your plan for your mom? (I can't tell you, my mom reads WoW Insider.)

* This public service announcement was brought to you by gamers who love their moms.

I don't know if I quite buy this one, but it's an interesting idea: Jias says that this week begins a period of time in the World of Warcraft known as "noob season": all of the folks who found WoW under their tree, or decided to use their gift cards to try out "the Shatner game" are going to be rolling their first character over the next couple of weeks, and will probably have lots of questions and very little learned etiquette.

Jias sees it as a bad thing (we have to deal with noobs), but I tend to go a little more toward Neth's side of the argument: it's a chance to be veterans of the game, and to help players who haven't seen all this stuff before figure it out. Just last night, I was leveling my Hunter and decided to join a PUG in Blackrock Depths out of the blue-- for some reason, only one of them had ever been in the instance before. But being an old hand, I led them through all the twists and turns down there, and we finished all the quests through the Attunement rock (The Lyceum gave us a little trouble, but it was late, so we called it).

Will there be a few more players asking for gold or not quite clear that all tanks should be carrying a shield? Probably. But we should probably be as welcoming and patient with these folks as possible-- they'll be the same people listening on the LFG channel when you ask "LFM for Utgarde Keep."

WoW is a big part of the time my husband and I spend together. If we're not actually playing, we're usually talking about strategies or our in-game goals. Likewise, I spend a ton of time with my guildmates, either raiding or just joking around. These are people I consider good friends.

So with one of the major gift giving holidays just around the corner, I've been working on ideas for WoW-themed presents for the lot of them. And I'm certainly not the only one. The folks over at Warcraft Chicks have been compiling a list of inexpensive to legendary items you can buy or make for your loved ones. There are also a lot of posts over on WoW Ladies about gift ideas. Likewise, Grumble N' Autumnn has compiled a list of in-game toys.

At this point, though, there's less than a week before Christmas. Yikes! So in the interest of time, I'm going to put together one giant list of WoW-related holiday gift ideas and where you can get them.

Speaking of great WoW-related gifts for the holidays, Petopia's creator has broken out a Cafepress site, complete with official Petopia goods for the Hunter on your gift list. There are the standard items-- t-shirts, cups, and a Mazzaranche tote bag.

But the kicker is this: a 2008 Petopia wall calendar. Featuring fun screenshots (and even some original art) of the best and most favorite pets in the game. I love it. Echeyakee, Humar, Takk the Leaper-- all the greats are here to count down 2008 with you. At $25 it's a little pricey, but on the other hand, any Hunter would love to have that as a gift this holiday season. Very cool idea to put that together, and totally fun to see your favorite virtual pets show up in a setting like that.

If you find yourself wondering what to get a World of Warcraft fan this year for the holiday (or have family wondering the same thing), J!nx has the page for you-- they've set up both men's and women's pages for Warcraft gamers. Unfortunately all I see up front are the t-shirts (not that those aren't cool), but there are also links on the side to all the other stuff they offer.

And they've even got Horde and Alliance wrapping paper for any gift you choose to grab. Most of the people giving me gifts are pretty utilitarian at this point, so all I'm expecting from Greatfather Winter is a coffeemaker, not a mega-pack of stickers, pins, and patches. But then again, anything wrapped up in official Horde paper is 100% cooler. Blood, thunder, and holiday cheer!

[Via Wonderland]

Regular readers will know that I'm a huge fan of real world crafts based on WoW (I'm disappointed that it seems like that Crochet set never worked out-- if anyone plans to make the Twill set, let me know). And so I was thrilled to see these papercraft figures that "Eric" has put together-- he's making paper models of pets in WoW, and he's selling the plans (in a PDF files) to make them yourself. At least I think that's what he's selling-- his site is pretty barebones, to say the least.

But he's got the bunnies and some dragonwhelps up, and over on his eBay page, you can see actual models of a few he's put together (I especially like the mechanical chicken). I'm not tempted to buy any, because I know I'd completely mess it up, but the few he's put together look awesome.

More please! I'd like to see a papercraft Bangalash, and I know kids all over the world would love a papercraft Murloc. As you've probably guessed, I'm clueless about this papercraft stuff, but would it be possible to build player models this way, or is that too complicated?

[ via WorldofWar.net ]

I've been extremely fortunate to be in some guilds with exceptionally generous people. When I was levelling my first character, a warlock, I found a very nice guild where people shared a lot of drops. I was out working on level 19 one day when a hunter on guild chat mentioned that they'd had a set of Black Velvet Robes drop. For a level 21 caster item, it's pretty much the best thing ever. I said something to the effect of "wow, those are really cool" in guild chat. An hour later, they were in my mailbox. I was just stunned at the generosity. Those robes sell for a lot of gold, even with the level 21 requirement making them less desirable for twinks in battlegrounds.

Is this sort of generosity common? I have a very limited perspective, having been in exactly two guilds, so I'd like to hear your stories. What kind of items have you seen given away (or sold at well below cost)? What kinds of criteria are used for giving things away? I'm less likely to give something to someone's alt than their main, but I'd like to read your comments on this.