Shopping for January Birthday Gifts - Snowdrops!

It can be tough having your birthday in January! And tough, too, for those who are racking their brains to think of a birthday present so soon after Christmas.

Not only is it the time when the credit card bills from our Christmas shopping start arriving but often a kind of 'gift-shopping fatigue' has set in, a reaction to all the frantic hunt for Christmas gifts. 

It's too easy to resort to rolling the Christmas and January Birthday gifts into one - sometimes a sensible solution but often disappointing for the person on the receiving end! Whatever we may say about not wanting a fuss on our birthdays, deep down most of us want to feel that our birthday is important, that our birthday is our special day.

So here are some ideas for making a January Birthday Girl - of any age! - feel very special!

Did you know that each month has a couple of flowers assigned to it - the Birth Month Flowers? You can read all about the Birth Month Flowers here:

 The Birth Month Flowers

For those of us who live in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, the Snowdrop is probably the more familiar of the January Birth Month flowers - in winter and early spring, the only Carnations available would be hot-house grown. ('Snowflakes' grow better in the Southern Hemisphere - eg in Australia)

The tiny, pure white Snowdrop bells with their spiky green leaves are usually the first of the spring flowers to push their way up through the soil and open to let us know that winter is on its way out, even though there may well still be some freezing weather to follow. I have sometimes even spotted the first Snowdrops in my little garden while the snow is still on the ground! Sometimes Snowdrops don't even put in an appearance until February and certainly the poet who named them 'February Fair Maid' associated them with February. 

Snowdrop Quotation to Inspire You

(an earlier blog post about Snowdrops)

But, officially, the Snowdrop is the January Birth Month Flower - so I have created a collection of January Birthday Cards and Gifts that will show anyone with a January birthday that you have taken the trouble to find something really special for their birthday.

The 'Snowdrops' in my collection were originally silkscreen-printed, based on a drawing of a bunch of Snowdrops from my garden. Years later, I painted them again in watercolour and used the motif to make a repeating pattern as well as keeping the 'bunch' intact so that there's plenty of variety in my 'Snowdrops' collection.

The Birthday Cards in this collection are ready for you to personalize with your own message. And because the elements of some of them are presented as templates, they can easily be customized, as can most of the gifts. 

In many cases you can change the background colour and re-size the pattern or even rotate if for a totally different look! And the monograms and the 'shields' that enclose them, can all be removed if you prefer to leave the gift with just the pattern or floral motif. Playing around with the design elements is all part of the fun and is the way to make sure that your gift is truly unique!

Click on the image to see the full 'Snowdrops' collection  

Snowdrops January Birthday Cards and Gifts
by Posh & Painterly

If you've ever shopped at Zazzle, you'll be aware that the number of products on offer is constantly growing! Due to lack of space, I've only presented you with eighty "Snowdrop" products in this collection but if you'd like me to create a different "Snowdrop" gift, please contact me through my Posh & Painterly store and I'll normally have it ready for you in a couple of days, at no extra charge.

David Dimbleby,
chairman on BBC Question Time

Because my 'Snowdrops' collection features flowers, it is unashamedly focused on 'Gifts for Girls' (of all ages!). So what about the boys and men whose birthdays fall in January?

That's definitely more tricky, though I think we probably make false assumptions about flowery patterns when it comes to men - I've noticed that TV presenters and newsreaders often wear beautifully floral neck-ties and in the past, I've blogged about 'men and floral greeting cards' HERE.

'Snowdrops' Tie

So I've used my ever-growing stash of floral patterns to put together a collection of Floral Neckties - some may even appeal to the 'gals' as well as the 'guys'!

Click on the image to see the full 'Floral Ties' collection

Floral Patterned Neckties
by Posh & Painterly

And here's an article I came across with some useful tips on different ways to tie a tie -

Ways of tying a Neck-tie

However, gifts for the men and the boys can cause us females headaches for a variety of reasons and deserve a blog post all to themselves. 

So next time, I'll be focusing on some of the reasons that buying gifts for men, whether they're friends, relatives or colleagues, can be so perplexing - and offering some tips that I hope will make it easier.

I'll also be including a collection of Gifts or Cards for Men in nearly every subsequent blog post - so make sure you pop back often!

And in the meantime, if you have any particular gift-buying questions or tips - or even stories of a gift that went wrong, or a surprise gift that went down especially well! - we'd love to hear about them in the comments.

So till next time, good luck with your January Birthday gift-buying!