Unusual Baby Gifts - original ideas for presents

Looking for some ideas for baby gifts? So was I. So I've decided to build up a list of ideas here.

The page is divided into groups

1. Personalized baby gifts

2. Green baby gifts

3. Presents for babies with an original, 21st Century feel to them

4. Interesting ideas with a more traditional approach

5. One for the proud parents!

Let's see what we can find...

These days there are some really great ideas which take advantage of on-line ordering to allow you to make all kinds of personalized gifts.

My current top picks are:

1. Baby Movie Posters
2. Cashmere Baby Blankets with the name knitted right into the design
3. Photograph of Dawn on Baby's First Day

These are really fun. You upload a photograph of the baby and choose from a gallery of movie poster designs. The baby's picture appears in the poster, but that's only the beginning of the fun. You can also get to play around with all the words on the poster, such as:

• The title of the movie
• Starring (or introducing...) you know who
• Produced by... the parents
• Now showing in... baby's home town
• Catering by... mother
• Soundtrack available on... Howlin' Records

If you're buying one of these to give to someone, I imagine the full-sized posters will be right for you. But they also small card-sized versions which are printed in quantity for you to send out as baby-birth announcements.

There are plenty of styles to choose from and ideas for funny lines to include.

Their web site is:

http://www.5starbaby.com/

I've seen baby blankets with the baby's name embroidered on the edge or something like that. But these are different.

1. They're made out of cashmere.
2. The name and birthday (or any other message) is knitted right into the middle of the design.

Now that's special! These really do make unusual baby gifts.

You type the message on the order form on the web site and then they knit each blanket individually for you.

The blankets are made out of super-soft cashmere or merino wool and they're knitted in Scotland where they've been doing this kind of thing for centuries. But using a web site means you can order on line from anywhere and have one of these super-special blankets shipped out to you within a couple of weeks.

The web site is:

http://www.studioroam.co.uk/

This is a variation on the "newspaper from the day you were born" theme.

This photographer gets up early every morning to take a picture at dawn each day. Sometimes there's a sunrise, sometimes not. It helps that he lives on the coast in Cornwall, England, one of the more beautiful parts of the world. So even the days with no actual sun still seem to have a very special spiritual quality to them.

There's usually a small group of pictures for each morning. You can choose from different sizes of print and different frames then add a personal message to go in the border.

A simple, good idea. This strikes me as a gift which will start out appealing to the parents, but may well end up on the desk or wall of the child in 40 years time.

The web site is:

http://www.myfirstday.co.uk/

You're looking for something to give to a baby, aren't you? So perhaps something green might be wise, since we can only guess what the world will be like when this baby is an adult.

Planting a tree to mark the birth of a child is a traditional idea which deserves to come back into favour. There are various ways of doing it:

Welcome to the World Tree Gift Pack

If you live in the UK, Tree2mydoor.com offer the perfect solution: a gift pack containing all that you need ready for the planting ceremony

• Baby tree of your choice
• Personalized pewter plaque engraved with you personal message
• Wooden plinth for your plaque (FSC assured)
• Tree protector tube and stake
• Welcome to the World baby greetings card

Their web site is:

http://www.tree2mydoor.com

Do It Yourself Version

Of course, there's nothing to stop you planting a tree in your own pot and delivering it complete with gift tag.

Or some other plant. My father planted a cactus to mark the birth of each of his children. Planting something which grows so slowly can have an unexpected sobering effect though. As a child I remember 'my' cactus as a tiny object which never seemed to change from year to year. Very uninteresting to me as a child in fact. But when I last saw it, in middle-age, I was rocked back on my feet to discover that it looked like something out of a Western desert. John Ford would have approved. I was somewhat stunned. And suddenly felt rather old.

As an in between version, I would recommend something like a lemon tree. Plant a pip in a pot and the earliest the child might expect to see a fruit would be in seven year's time. That's a very big chunk of time. But just about imaginable. Unlike the growth of my cactus.

Plant it Forward

Another way of doing this, with obvious worldwide delivery as well as worldwide benefits is the Plant it Forward scheme run by the "Plant a Tree Today" organisation.

They plant trees in India, Indonesia, Nepal and Thailand. With this scheme the card you send is an e-card (with the hope that the recipient will then join the scheme themselves). But that seems fine, this is one case where it is most definitely the thought which counts.

Their web site is

http://www.plant-a-tree-today.org/

Here's an idea for a present with more 21^st century feel to it:

An Internet domain (address)

By which I mean www.babyname.com and an email address like baby@babyname.com, not baby@aol.com!

It'll be a few years before the recipient is in a position to appreciate this one, but having your own domain might provide a certain cachet at school for a while. Perhaps during the course of childhood that will either become commonplace or irrelevant -- things have a habit of changing fast on the Internet -- but for now this still qualifies as an unusual baby gift.

The obvious place to go for one of these is, forgive the pun:

http://www.godaddy.com/

These are the ideas for presents which didn't quite make the cut. But some of these are well worth consideration and might spark some new ideas for you:

Silver Spoons, Napkins and the Like

Retro or what? I myself have a silver napkin ring, complete with my initials, which now shares pride of place alongside one for my wife at my mother-in-law's house. When I was born (let's not go there) this was a fairly common christening present. And for most of my life it seemed like something out of a time warp. But now, guess what: I'm rather fond of it.

I have a feeling that there's something special about a gift like this which gives them a timeless quality. It may well be that they're due for a revival. I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand.

Savings, Bonds and Such

Well, this is certainly very thoughtful of you. But don't expect baby to be too excited about this for the first few years!

Having said that, something which has some crazy long period of time associated with it, like 15 whole years, can have a special fascination for a six year old.

The obvious candidates are things like Treasury Bonds in the USA and National Savings in the UK.

Here are the links:

USA: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/planning/plan_gifts.htm

UK: http://www.nsandi.com/savingneeds/investforachildsfuture.jsp

I just came across this site which fits into my subject matter of personalized or unsual baby gifts. Except the baby would have to wait quite a few years before they could wear this.

So I really think this is one for the proud parents.

This company makes 'portrait cufflinks'. These are 3D profiles of a head, half for the left wrist and half for the right. They clip together and come with a special stand so that when you're not wearing them they turn into a miniature bust. They can cast the cufflinks in a variety of precious metals and I assume they work from photographs.

So the proud parent could get to wear their baby's head on their sleeve or have a micro bust on their desk. Much better than casting baby's first shoe in silver.

The web site has an animated picture which shows the cufflinks in their various forms here:

http://www.elevenforty.com/