Celebrate Baby’s First Christmas… on a Budget

Christmas is such an exciting time, especially when it’s your first one as a parent. When you are looking at how to celebrate baby’s first Christmas, it’s easy to get carried away by the pressure to spend spend spend, especially in this era of social media where sometimes it can feel like everyone apart from you has taken their child to an expensive Breakfast with Santa, put together pricey personalised Christmas Eve boxes or even jetted off to Lapland!

If you are as lucky as we are, relatives will love to spoil your child with gifts so I always try as a parent to focus more on making things special, which doesn’t need to cost a fortune.

A great idea is to make salt dough hand print and foot print tree ornaments (you can find a recipe online) – as well as making these for yourself, you could make lots of them and give them as gifts to relatives. In Christmases to come you will unpack them and marvel at how their hands and feet could ever have been so tiny. Ensure you add a hole to the ornaments for ribbon can be added so that they can be hung on the tree.

If you are anything like me you will barely sit down all day on the 25th, in between preparing the dinner and topping up drinks. Make sure you take the time to get plenty of photos of your little one – yes, that includes photos of you and your little one. I have dozens of photos of my little girl and her grandparents on her first Christmas but none of me cuddling her. I wish I could go back in time and fix that! Remember to delegate things so you get plenty of snuggle time on the special day.

A lovely idea is to start an annual tradition – ours is taking a stroll through our town on Christmas Eve to see our neighbours’ Christmas lights. The adults take hot chocolate in flasks which our little ones have joined in with as they have gotten older. Of course, this is absolutely free.

On the subject of traditions, perhaps you could read your little one a particular Christmas story or poem this year and keep up the tradition annually. Or allow them to choose a new decoration from the shops each year to add to the tree (even budget shops like B&M and Home Bargains stock decorations so this needn’t cost an arm and a leg).

In summary, remember that special memories last much longer than ‘things’ so try to make that your focus and have a lovely time when the time comes to celebrate baby’s first Christmas.