Mother’s Day is almost here so I’ve curated my own selection of gift ideas to share with you — based on my personal favorites! My selection includes some freebie ideas, because at the end of the day it’s about showing appreciation for our moms — and you don’t need money to do that. *wink*
Category Archives: gift ideas
30+ non-candy Easter basket ideas
I’ve seen a lot of mom posts on Facebook asking for non-candy Easter basket ideas recently and I’m here to tell you – DON’T STRESS!! We have two weeks until Easter and you can still pull off a fabulous basket filled with non-sugary surprises!
Ever since Grace’s first Easter I’ve always tried to stuff her basket with non-candy treats, sure I include the traditional chocolate bunny and the marshmallow yumminess that are Peeps, but I really don’t want it to be all sugar-filled. Each year it gets a little tougher to keep it fresh and not duplicate the non-candy options but the one thing I’ve learned over the past (nearly) 5 Easter seasons — KEEP IT SIMPLE AND DON’S STRESS! Kids don’t care or keep track!
The first couple of years I went all out (i.e. monogramed beach towels from PBK – but in all seriousness I do love their towels.) But in more recent years I learned to shop the dollar bins at Target and local dollar stores. Sure I throw in a few “nicer” items from time to time, but my girls are just excited to get a basket full of surprises each year.
The one challenge for me this year is that Rae is now almost 2 and wants whatever her older sister has. This means when big sister plays with legos (you know the kits with the super small pieces that come with a choking hazard disclaimer for little ones,) little sister wants to get her hands right in there too. Luckily many of the things we’re planning to include this year can work for both girls…whew!
So all that said, I thought it’d be fun to I’d share my non-candy options for anyone looking for ideas. I’ve broken my ideas down by infant, toddler (1-2 year old) and preschooler (3-5 year old) and I’ve also included photos of our Easter baskets from years past.
DIY unicorn giftwrap
Back in the day (meaning: before children) I used to make the gift packaging for our nieces and nephews birthdays. I really enjoyed it, but over the years it became “easier” to purchase the wrapping paper that will ultimately be ripped apart in seconds and thrown away moments later. Let’s be honest, I was doing it more for me than for them because I really enjoyed doing it. I like being crafty.
That said, I think the unicorns have inspired me because I really felt like making a unicorn gift bag to go along with our present for our nieces birthday this weekend (remember how I mentioned last week that I went way overboard on the whole unicorn theme?) So that’s what I set out to do.
Fast forward to present day. I had this vision in my head of a white gift bag for the unicorn but I needed one large enough to fit the gift — in other words the small favor bags wouldn’t work. Do you know how difficult it is to find one single large-size white gift bag? Not a pack of 5, not one with polka dots or stripes. Just a single, plain, LARGE, white gift bag. Heck I would have settled for medium. I went to 5 stores and could not find a single one.
Had to switch up my game plan.
I rummaged through my craft desk and closets and found a roll of this pretty Tiffany blue wrapping paper, which I was iffy about because I really had my vision of this white unicorn. I think it turned out pretty spectacular if I do say so myself, what do you think?
gift ideas for the unicorn lover
My nieces birthday is this weekend so I’ve been on the hunt for something that she’ll love — she’s really into unicorns right now. Do you know how popular unicorn-anything is right now? I mean, unicorns are everywhere!
For example, I often refer to this graphic whenever someone refers to my ginger hair in a not-so-happy-way (think red-headed step-child, *wink*):
my go-to baby gear: 3 to 6 months
Time has been flying by, it’s so hard to believe that I now have a 6-month old! She’s not a newborn anymore (tear.) She laughs and plays… she interacts with her sister (which I love,) and those are seriously some of the most precious of moments I’ve ever seen. Along with this age comes a new set of baby-gear must-have’s. Here are some of our regular go-to’s as of late.
my go-to baby gear: newborns to 2 months
Let’s be honest, a lot of being a parent is trial and error. No matter how much you research baby products you just never know how you or your baby will like something until after you’ve tried it. After having two babies have a pretty good handle on what baby gear was useful during the first few months (at least for us.) Here’s what I found to be the most useful items with both babes!
