Birthday Shopping in My Attic and a Non-Consumer Birthday Cake

I am reprinting this post I wrote about my son’s third birthday as part of the Birthday Cake Round-Up at Life As Mom.

For some reason, one of the hardest thing for me to reconcile with our bonus baby is what to do with the toys from the first batch. When children are born a couple years apart toys are naturally passed down, but with a 14 year gap between my second and third child, the toys had already been packed away in the attic for our future grandchildren.

I struggled with whether I should start from scratch and buy Rew all new toys. That seemed unnecessarily expensive, plus the toys in the attic were actually made in America and Europe. Should I bring all the toys down? That seemed like it would be overwhelming, as well as increase the likelihood of spoiling Rew. So I sat down with my older kids and we came up with a plan: Whenever a gift-giving occasion occurred, they would “shop” in the attic for a present for their younger brother.

Andrew is quite happy playing with a regifted train he received for his birthday!

I wanted to make an airplane cake for Andrew’s birthday, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. I asked my older kids for ideas and we were leaning towards making the top of the cake look like the deck of an aircraft carrier and putting toy airplanes on top. However, when I took my oldest son “shopping” in the attic, he found an airplane and control tower that went with the Thomas items he had picked out for Rew and suggested I use them to decorate the cake. We washed them off and used them to make this birthday cake:

What I like most about this cake, is that everyone was involved in creating it, including my husband who marked the runway for me. Later that evening I told my oldest son, that I didn’t remember buying that plane set for him and he said that I bought it for him at a thrift shop in Virginia. So we reused a reused toy to decorate the cake!

Have you ever regifted or given a used item for a gift? I have to admit that I was a little uncomfortable with the idea at first. However, when I was looking on the web for some items for Rew’s Easter basket, I saw his favorite stuffed animal, which is a hand-me-down from his big sister for sale for $89.00 on amazon.com. Apparently, at some point items stop being old hand-me-downs and start becoming valuable vintage items!

Since writing this post we have shopped in the attic several times for presents. My daughter even found a new outfit going through a box of my old clothes. Looking at the old hand me downs as vintage items has brought about a paradigm shift in my attitude about regifting.