D is turning thirty this year. Looking for ideas on unique, maybe personalized gifts? Did a photo book for her sixteenth birthday. Got an idea from here about 18 unique gifts for her 18th birthday. Put together a bunch of childhood videos for her 21st. We had 25 friends send her a message in the 25 days leading up to her 25th birthday.
We will be meeting her that weekend and will likely host a dinner and a show with friends/family.
30 flower bouquet.
30 snacks in a basket.
Donate $30 to a few of her favorite charities.
Does her bday month have 30 days? Something daily with that - a text, a joke, a story about her childhood…
We did a fundraiser for one of our kids’ 30th – 30 donations of $30 to a place they volunteered (the nonprofit helped us with that). We also gave him a fancy camera he had wanted.
Niece turned 30, my sibling gave her something that had belonged to her great-grandmother.
No idea what we will do when our next one turns 30, so interested in the answers. This generation seems to take 30 soooooo seriously.
Maybe in part due to the constant bombardment by “30 under 30” lists that make it sound like life ends after you turn 30 and if you have not cured cancer or founded a unicorn by then, you are a total failure.
Could get 30 people to send cards, and give them all at the same time.
Interview and video 30 of their friends and family members? Or collect notes from 30 of them?
$1000 in a mutual fund account?
It’s so hard! I always tell my kids that constantly comparing yourself to others gets you nowhere, but it’s hard not to. One thing to remember about those lists is that those people are really only a very small part of the general population. Not everyone accomplishes that much by 30, not everyone who has a big accomplishment gets on those lists, and plenty of people reach success later on. Also, they don’t have lists for beating cancer by 30, becoming clean and sober by 30, etc…
Also, life doesn’t end at 30, for many it’s just beginning!
As for a good 30th birthday present:
-30 of her favorite candy
-30 cards from 30 people
Not sure how much money you want to spend. But I will say that we gave both our kids nice road bikes for 25th birthday… and they loved that. (Well actually we shopped for the bike with local kid and bought the physical item. The cyclist Boston kid got same amount of money, which allowed him to be able to afford the nicer bike that he really wanted.)
It’s gets harder to get gifts for these kids as they get older. I prefer to not surprise them - but work with them and get them what they want. But they do love it when I add on small things as surprises - something that I think they would enjoy. Not big ticket items.
I am not looking for specific birthday gift item ideas I guess - more on unique ways to celebrate. I do like the 30 cards from 30 people, the 30 snacks (I am sure I can find 30 different kinds of chips for my chip loving daughter!) and the 30$ donations to charities.
I think some sort of “experience”. Trip to a large city, preferably nearby. Dinner and a show in your city. Do you live in a city, or nearby one?
Just an update. I ended up getting several friends and family to send me a short “thing I love about you”. Compiled a Thirty Things we Love about You sheet, printed it and added it to a scrapbook. Each page in the scrapbook then had pictures of D with that person and the quote and there were a few extra pages thrown in. Was a big hit. She loved that I had quotes from her current residency friends, some from her childhood friends, high school friends and of course family. Quotes ranged from the serious to the silly. Scrapbook took two long nights - not sure the amount of work I put into it was appreciated, but I had fun 
We did end up meeting her at a conference she was at. Several of our close friends were able to make it too as a surprise and it made for a lovely long weekend!
Sounds like a great gift!!
Sweet gift! My younger s and DIL turned 30 in the throes of covid. So we had 2 bottles of good scotch, one aged 12 years and one aged 18 years (to total 30 years) delivered to them!
I love this idea of wine signifying the birthday/years. D’s boyfriend is turning 34 later this week and loves wine - I know nothing about buying wine. How could I secure a bottle/couple of bottles to add up to his 34 years? Where do you get something like that? Would any wine or liquor store have this?? (Seriously I’m clueless)
@abasket - same here. I didn’t get the aged bottles since I don’t know what’s good and what’s not. Also very expensive!
D loves whiskey - so we did do a whiskey distillery tour and tasting. Was a wonderful day!
1990 was a good year for many French and CA wines, but can’t recall if 1991 was. You can go on sites like wine.com, Vivino, cellartracker and others on the year and see what pops up. They will have reviews. Only full bodied reds. Whites and some lighter reds are gonna be past their prime. But fun idea- buy wines now in the year of your grandkids births and hold them for special events. I did this for my sons and pulled out bottles (86 and 90) for their weddings
Great idea. We are storing some 2017 wines… for our GC 21st birthday.
Also, consider buying large format bottles. We were told by several winery folks that these large bottles age better.
These kinds of cameo and other brand personalized greetings from celebrities is fun. About Us | Cameo
Also gets them to sell more magnums, etc I had also purchased some bottles from the year our kids were married and the grandkids’ births, but might have, oops, accidentally opened one or two:)