My Baby Gift Basket Experience

I had a friend recently that just had her first child.  This beautiful little girl actually does look like her mother.  I know that many people say that children always look like their parents, but in this particular case it is actually quite true.  We have been friends for almost twenty years and I knew that I wanted to buy her a great baby gift basket, so I started looking for all the “key elements” that I wanted to put into the basket.  This was my first mistake, although I just didn’t know it at the time.

I knew I wanted to put in some baby clothes, some plush toys, a really cute teddy bear and some sort of learning toys.  Unfortunately, I can get a little obsessive, and I started picking over every detail trying to find the perfect “this and that” for every single category that I had in my mind.  I had to find the “perfect teddy bear” for the baby gift basket, and the perfect baby sweater, and on and on and on.  Before I knew it, I had discovered that my approach had a few problems.

One, I had spent a great deal of time researching all the different items that I needed.  Had anyone been around to stop me, they would have probably told me that I was acting as though I was buying a car.  Yes, I was quite carried away.  Another major problem was the overall cost.  My baby gift basket was slowly becoming more expensive than the baby’s delivery.  With a little reflection, I soon realized that taking out a second mortgage might be a little excessive.  Third, I found some baby gift baskets that were pre-assembled that already had much of what I was planning on putting in my basket.  Oh, some of the details might have been different, but it didn’t justify the work that I had put into my baby gift basket project.  I had spent a good hour just picking out the basket alone!

I began to realize that my approach just wasn’t that great.  I soon saw that there was a better way to tackle getting my friend and her little girl a baby gift basket.  Looking around I realized that most of the work had been done for me, and that I could just buy a baby gift basket that was already assembled.  I was somewhat surprised to see the great amount of variety that existed.  There were all kinds of baby gift baskets, with all sorts of themes and variety.  “Easy isn’t always bad,” I told myself, in fact, easy is usually pretty darn good.

My friend loved her baby gift basket and I felt smart in the end that I stopped obsessing and just picked out a great pre-assembled basket.  The basket wasn’t identical to what I had in mind, but it was very close.  Close enough in fact that I was really satisfied overall.  I have another friend that is pregnant now, and you can bet I know what I will do this time around.