Gifts is not my first love language, it’s actually dead last on the list for me. I’m a quality time girl (quality conversation to be specific) all the way… but one of my close friends just had a new baby (wait, is there such thing as an old baby?!) and gifts is close to the top for her, and there are few things more important than telling people we love them in a language they can hear/feel, so I had some fun over the past couple of weeks putting together a surprise gift basket for her. It was supposed to be a ‘new baby eve’ present but the new guy came early. Way to ruin it. (kidding!)

Even though receiving gifts might not be the most important to me, I always want the people in my life to be able to feel how much they mean to me and how much I love them… and I love having some fun and putting together an awesome gift basket. A good gift doesn’t always have to be big, or cost a lot of money, sometimes putting together a lot of different smaller things that you know someone loves or will laugh over is even more fun.

The magic of the gift basket is that you have fun making it and the receiver has a lot of fun receiving it, discovering all the different things in there that you see in them or know they will like and (hopefully) feeling how loved they are.

Since my friend just had a baby this gift was centered a lot around validating her (the one who’s been doing all the heavy lifting) and ‘the body’ (I mean, she just grew a baby people, how amazing is that?!), fun treats that I knew she’d like (and if there’s something that comes in an extra huge bag, I’d totally suggest doing that… a few ‘over the top’ items will add to the amusement for sure. Be ridiculous, it’s awesome) and definitely lots of chocolate (duh). I threw in some room spray to help quiet the space (I mean, she just had her second baby, things are gonna get hectic and anything to bring back some zen is surely a good thing), and some indulgent bath salts for relaxing… anything your person would like or is a ‘hello’ to a beautiful part of them is perfect… that’s the magic.

I had fun making some homemade ‘coupons’ and added little notes on some of the items to add some laughs and humor and let her know what I was thinking in adding that specific thing to the basket.

And of course I added some homemade goodies to top it off… I mean, if you bake good food you’ve gotta break it out for the ones you love!

So, a big congratulations to my friend Stephenie, she’s amazing and I’m lucky to have her (and lots of other beautiful amazing people) in my life. And if you haven’t said so to the people you love in a while… hearing you are loved never ever gets old. Even if you don’t have a basket full of goodies to go along with it.