Gift Guide: Birthday Presents For Toddlers

Welcome to my “Gift Guide” series, where I will be producing gift ideas for national holidays, anniversaries, special occasions and of course birthdays. To kick start my Gift Guide series, I have put together a list of presents we have bought for my toddler’s second birthday. I also included some of the decorations we bought. I hope this gift guide will be helpful and if you need any bespoke gift ideas then please feel free to reach out to me by email or even DM me on Instagram.

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Gift Guide: Birthday Presents For Toddlers

There are so many, to be precise too many, toys on the market for kids. There are many different kinds: some which teach, some which are just fun and some that look pretty. The toy industry really is thriving especially coz children are the best consumers. They see it, they want it, parents buy it. We’re not quite there with my son yet as he doesn’t understand the concept of wanting and buying items, but sure will get there fast I think. Toddler age is hard for picking toys, coz what do you get that won’t bore them too fast? Plus they change their tastes and love for specific characters/ cartoons very quickly. For example, one day he loves Cars, the next Toy Story, then Thomas & Friends. And how we can forget about the infamous Minions!!

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With all that said, I think it’s important to have a mix of toys that toddlers can play with. There should be some developmental toys so that can teach them something important, but there should also be some plain outright fun toys too. I whole heartily agree that kids should be learning something new all the time, but let’s also not forget that kids are still kids and there will be plenty of time for them to learn, so we should still encourage fun activities too. Here are the toys I decided on for my son:

Fun Toys

To continue with my son’s love for trains, I wanted to get him a wooden personalised train set – with his name on it and a little reminder of his 2nd birthday. I love the fact that it is wooden – it gives toys a different long-lasting, luxurious feel to them.

My parents bought my son this great Chad Valley Wooden Table and 90 Piece Train Set – it is the cutest ever. It comes with the table as the set up with the train and little town. This makes the perfect addition to any playroom for kids.

Learning Toys

My son was very kindly gifted a £45 voucher by Books2Door to purchase an amazing book set of Thomas & Friends. He loves trains so this was a great addition to his book collection. I had wanted him to love reading and before he wasn’t too into it but slowly he is becoming more and more interested in reading. I even catch him wandering over to his bookcase and picking a book up and start flicking through it. On his own. Without me forcing him to. I think the Thomas and Friends The Complete Collection 65 Book Box Set will be his new favourite collection of books we can read together before bed every night. A great addition to our bedtime routine, any attempt to make baby sleep better. The Books2Door service is great – easy to place an order and get fast delivery direct to your home.

Decorations

In preparation for my son’s second birthday party (which of course we had to have at home with just family because of lockdown), we went for the very popular choice of Toy Story! It’s one of my son’s favourite cartoons at the moment, so I thought it would be a great theme for a party. Shame, of course, we couldn’t get any other children but still, he had an amazing time. If you’re looking for party theme ideas check out this helpful site for more tips.

We got a whole variety of decorations including standard latex balloons, foil balloons (connected long balloon, round foil balloon and number 2), Buzz Lightyear large cardboard cut- out, and a themed party set.

I also got a canister of helium from Party Rama – my advice is to get a double pack as a minimum as you actually get half of the balloons done then what it says on the tin.

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The Cake

For all of our celebratory cakes, we usually buy from Caffe Concerto (no this is not an AD, I just love their cakes and delivery service). Cakes at Caffee Concerto are delicious and beautifully presented. We have ordered from there for my 25th Birthday, my son’s christening cake, my sister’s birthday cakes, my wedding cake and more! Their cakes are reasonably priced for what you get and you do get a lot of it.

For my son’s birthday, we were hoping to have a Toy Story themed Buzz Lightyear cake but with lockdown and everything I decided to play it safe and order from a large cake shop. We bought this cake, which strictly speaking was not a Toy Story themed cake but it was pretty close, and we instead just added a Toy Story cake topper and it came out so good. If we had decided to go with a “Cars: Lightning McQueen” theme then this cake would have been absolutely perfect. The candles were just bought from Waitrose and complemented the cake very well.