He won't know the difference...

Our little boy's second birthday is fast approaching, and on the heels of the arrival of a new baby.  Needless to say that it appears August is going to be a busy month for this family.

I LOVE buying gifts, especially for my boys. But we have recently decided to trim our spending, including birthdays and other gift giving occasions. Of course there are a zillion things that I would love to get for Benjamin, but those things will have to wait until another time. So here's how we're going to economize and maximize all at the same time to celebrate our little buddy's birthday.

Ben loves to play with daddy's stethoscope and was recently spotted playing with the toy blood pressure cuff at the church nursery. Enter this little gift which is less than $13 at Wal-mart...

I also had a gift card to Shutterfly at my disposal. I have no recollection of where the card came from, but I do know that it allowed me to put together a personalized ABC book for Benjamin complete with pictures of himself, the dog, mama and daddy and the things that he loves with almost no cost to us.

I understand that this is more than enough for a two-year-old, especially considering he already has quite the collection of toys.  In fact at this age we could skip his birthday celebration altogether and he would be none the wiser. But I just want to shower my little boy on his big day, especially since he's going to be sharing the undivided attention he's become accustomed to over the past 24 months  with his little baby brother or sister in the days leading up to his birthday.

Then I had a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. Last summer I sold nearly all of my teaching materials with the exception of a very few items which occupy the space of half a paper box. But I couldn't bring myself to sell my children's books. I somehow managed to build a huge collection of picture books and chapter books during my short stint as an employee at Barnes & Noble and in the 6 years I spent as an elementary teacher. Probably half of the books are in like new condition with the exception of having my name written on the inside cover. Although I was able to part with a fraction of my collection I just had to hold onto the "good" ones. I always pictured having a library room where our kids could just go and pull books off the shelf and pour over them for hours. And though we don't have a "library" we do have a little boy who loves books and who has a birthday coming up and I have boxes of books sitting in the basement just waiting for little hands to open them. So sometime between now and the end of the month I'm going to head down to my pile of book boxes and gather a nice little selection of colorful books for my buddy. I suppose it will sort of be like re-gifting....but he won't know the difference....at least until he's old enough to notice that my maiden name is written his books.