• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, April 28, 2011

With Mother's Day a few weeks off, marketers are doing their best to offer novel ways to remember her. Lowe's, for instance, is targeting outdoor DIY projects as the ideal way to please her, offering plenty of mom-friendly ambience (solar-powered post caps for railings and birdbaths, for instance) and lots of bright flowers. The retailer is even connecting it to a mom-friendly cause, selling Susan G. Komen Plant for the Cure Gerbera Daisy, Dahlia or Geranium plants. And Hallmark is getting some buzz for an extensive line of postage-paid greeting cards, so slacker offspring don't even have to make a separate trip to the post office.

But it turns out moms aren't exactly feeling the love. A new survey from the Mom Complex, the marketing-to-mothers division of the Martin Agency, reports that 30% of moms say they typically get honored for no more than 5 to 10 minutes on Mother's Day. In fact, 40% feel their husband and children come first on Mother's Day, and 12% feel they don't even make the list.

Oh, and they hate their presents. What moms really want, the survey found, is time off from housework (57%) and a homemade gift or card. While 42% want that, only 28% got it last year. (And good for Lowe's, which is offering "Build & Grow" workshops so little kids can create homemade heart-shaped gifts.)

The good news is that Americans will be spending more on mom this year -- even if it's not on the things she wants. The National Retail Federation, in its annual survey of consumer intentions with BIGResearch, reports that Americans are planning to pamper mom a little, and expect to spend $140.73 on gifts, up from $126.90 last year -- about what they spent in 2008. (Total spending is expected to reach $16.3 billion.)

But they won't be pushing the vacuum around on her behalf. The biggest change, the NRF reports, is in electronics -- with 13.3% planning to get mom an electronic gift, a 48% jump from last year. Jewelry is also expected to be popular, with 31.2% percent of celebrants planning to buy mom silver, gold or diamonds -- a 19% increase. And of course, as ever, it will likely be one of the biggest holidays of the year for restaurants, with 54.7% treating mom to dinner or brunch. About 65% will buy flowers.