It’s always a delight to know a new baby girl has been born into the fam­ily, and it’s always an impulse to buy some­thing nice for her and the new par­ents. It can get pretty tricky when buy­ing stuff for the new baby girl — how can you be sure which gifts would be appre­ci­ated more? There’s also the nag­ging feel­ing about walk­ing into the baby shower with the exact same gift as another guest! Need­less to say, orig­i­nal baby gift ideas are pretty hard to come by.

Thank­fully, you can give gift bas­kets instead of sin­gle gift items. Gift bas­kets are com­bi­na­tions of closely-related gift items placed in a suit­able con­tainer, usu­ally a bas­ket. You can pre­pare and give gift bas­kets for all occa­sions, and the arrival of a new baby girl is a pretty good occa­sion. A well-prepared gift bas­ket for the lit­tle girl and her par­ents would be greatly appre­ci­ated, and it’s a novel way of say­ing how much you care for the new family.

Pink is the most pop­u­lar color for baby girls, so make sure you make the color a cen­tral theme of your gift bas­ket. You can also use other fem­i­nine col­ors, like yel­low, or neu­tral col­ors, like pur­ple, green, and white. Also remem­ber that pas­tel shades are always bet­ter than strong ones, since they con­vey a feel­ing of calm and quiet — some­thing you’d like the baby’s new room to be. If you’ve seen what the baby’s room looks like, you can also get a bet­ter idea of what kind of stuff would go well with the inte­rior design.

The most com­mon things to fill baby girl gift bas­kets are, of course, baby items. Now every baby needs dia­pers, and prepar­ing a lit­tle “dia­per tower” gift bas­ket can be a won­der­ful idea. Not only will you be sure that the items will be well-used, but you’ll be sav­ing the new par­ents some money down the line, too. You can also throw in some col­or­ful new bibs, pins, toys, and other baby items to spruce up the gift basket.

Toys are also great items to give to a new baby girl — any self-respecting nurs­ery for a lit­tle girl should be lined with stuffed toys. Stuffed toys also make for good com­pany in the crib, and even in the bed as the lit­tle girl grows up. Three stuffed ani­mals, one larger than the other two, or a col­lec­tion of tiny ones are good com­bi­na­tions. Just make sure the ani­mals are related to each other — you might want to give a “farm” or “pony” or “puppy show” theme to the gift bas­ket this way.

Babies spend most of their day asleep, so it’s also a good idea to fill your gift bas­ket with items the lit­tle girl can use while sleep­ing. Some comfy body suits and other sleep­wear, mit­tens, caps, and some dolls for com­pany would fit in a “sleepy” gift bas­ket well, in addi­tion to some bot­tles, mobiles, and maybe a musi­cal toy to help lull her to sleep.

Another good idea for a gift bas­ket theme is “bath time.” It might take a while for babies to get used to bath time, and some baby bath items like wash­cloths, sham­poo, tow­els, and rub­ber ducky can make her like get­ting squeaky clean. To make things a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, fill the bas­ket with “travel-sized” ver­sions of these items — it’s a friendly ges­ture and sug­ges­tion to the par­ents to take the lit­tle girl out every now and then.

When pick­ing out a con­tainer for your gift items, remem­ber that baby girl gift bas­kets aren’t lim­ited to the tra­di­tional wicker bas­ket. You can pick other con­tain­ers that may go bet­ter with your gift basket’s theme, like baby bath­tubs, ham­pers, or lit­tle per­am­bu­la­tors (in case she likes to play mommy as she grows older). These con­tain­ers can be con­sid­ered a part of the gift col­lec­tion itself, since they’re pretty useful.

One way to make the gift bas­ket more appeal­ing to the lit­tle girl’s par­ents is to include some­thing for them, as well. They’ll very much appre­ci­ate a good bot­tle of wine or apple cider, and maybe even some gourmet food items that the mother can munch on to keep up her strength — after all, tak­ing care of a baby is hard work!

The dad will prob­a­bly also need a lit­tle help tak­ing care of his new daugh­ter. Men are by nature bad at chang­ing dia­pers, so giv­ing him a few books about car­ing for his lit­tle girl will def­i­nitely make things eas­ier for him — and, of course, for the mom, too.

Gift bas­kets are always best when pre­pared with your own hands, but admit­tedly not all of us have that “cre­ative streak.” If this sounds like you, then maybe you can visit a gift bas­ket shop instead. Gift bas­ket shops almost always have pre-made gift bas­kets for all occa­sions on their store shelves, and baby girl gift bas­kets are pretty pop­u­lar. You can sim­ply pick one that suits the new baby girl and her parents.

To make even a store-bought gift bas­ket spe­cial, you can ask the gift bas­ket shop to per­son­al­ize it. Some of the bet­ter shops have per­son­al­iz­ing ser­vices, often knit­ting the baby girl’s name onto dolls, stuffed let­ters, or sleep­wear. They can also cus­tomize gift bas­kets for you — all you need is to give them your ideas on what kinds of items to fill the bas­ket with, and they’ll come up with some pretty on-target sug­ges­tions for you.

If by any chance you can’t make it to the baby shower, some of the bet­ter shops can also deliver the bas­kets to the couple’s doorstep. Ask them to make the deliv­ery dur­ing the baby shower itself — they’ll need the date and time — and you’ll be mak­ing a pleas­ant impact on the party even when you’re not around.

The beauty about prepar­ing your gift bas­ket is that by pre­sent­ing more than one gift item in a pretty bas­ket, you don’t add to its “Ah!” fac­tor, but mul­ti­ply it. And when the other guests ask where you got it, you can shrug and say, “I made it.” And every­one, espe­cially the par­ents, will love you for it.

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