Skip to Content

Meaningful Milestone Birthday Gifts

Milestone birthdays call for extra special gifts.  The first milestone present I ever gave was for my dad’s 60th birthday. It was one of those parties where you were supposed to bring “60 things” and instead of bringing trinkets I wanted to thing of something meaningful. I came up with a group gift idea (you’ll see below!) that he says is one of his favorite gifts of all time.

As always, I try to make the gift giving as painless for you as possible. Most of these printables come in several “milestone” ages so you can print off the one you need! How do you get to the printables? Simple! First sign up below using your email for The Gifty Girl Gift Printables library. It is full of awesome gift tags, signs, and components to make your gift giving easy and fun. Next, you will receive an email from me with the password you can use to log in to the printables library. Then you download your printables and print them off, easy peasy! This will also sign you up for my newsletter, that I send when I have great new gift ideas that I think you will love.

Here are some meaningful milestone birthday gifts that you’ll love to give.

*This post contains affiliate links. This means when you click on a link and purchase an item, I receive a small marketing payment from Amazon.com.

Gift Leis:

These gifts are more on the useful side for the teen milestones of 16 and 18-years-old. You’ve heard of flower leis, money leis and candy leis…now introducing gift leis! These are simple to make. I used clear cellophane wrapping paper, and fun fabric strips (made from 1/8th of a yard of fabric) to tie them. You can also print out some “punny” gift tags from The Gifty Girl Printables Library, “Lei’t me be the first to say congratulations!” “Hoo-Lei! You did it!” “Happy Birth-Lei” and “CongratuLEItions.”

If you have a 16-year-old who’s about to hit the road here is a lei is filled with things for new drivers: car air fresheners, gas gift card, keychain, car window wipes, mints).

Teen boy wearing a lei made of gifts or gift lei

The next lei would be perfect for high school grads heading out on their own. It has everything they need for laundry: a roll of quarters, a Tide  stain Pen, a bleach pen, laundry soap pods.

 

Memories Picture Frame

I love this way of giving the gift of memories. This gift can work for ANY milestone birthday and is lots of fun to put together. The idea is that you choose a corresponding number of photos that represent memories, then write about each memory on the back of the frame. They can rotate the pictures and memories and enjoy reading about your times together.

For this gift I used the IKEA Tolsby Frame (99 cents at IKEA stores!) which has an opening in front and in back, making it easy for the giftee to see the photo and memory. I also used Avery labels on the back. I just printed off my memory and stuck it on!

This was so much fun to put together, and if your pictures are digital it would be so easy to print off X photos, write on the back and put it together.

Bucket List Printable

 
 

I’ve seen a fun trend of people making “mini-bucket lists” for their next milestone birthday so I made it into a gorgeous printable. This gift has the power to take the dread out of an upcoming big birthday and turn it into an awesome opportunity to complete goals and/or have amazing experiences. The idea is that you would give this to a person prior to the milestone birthday along with a free printable of bucket list ideas. The birthday boy or girl gets to come up with 40 (or 30 or 50 etc) things they want to do by their next milestone birthday. One of my friends had one of her goals before 40 to be able to do the splits. It could be something like visit a certain city or read a particular book.  To add a little more to this gift, if you knew something on their list (like attending a concert) you could purchase tickets and attach it.  I love the idea of having something to look forward to and work towards as you approach a milestone birthday! Remember, this is free to print from my Gift Printables Library. Sign up below!

 
 

Things I’ve learned from you gift

There are two versions of this gift I want to share. The first is a gift my sisters and I gave my dad when he turned 60 when we were supposed to bring 60 items as a present. I thought it would be wonderful to show my dad all of the things we learned from him. We purchased 60 river rocks and divided them up, then wrote things we have learned from him. We put those into a glass container that he keeps in his office. Things have changed a bit since we did this gift, and things like these white or metallic permanent markers and these dark river rocks could make this gift even more of a work of art. I used a square glass vase and cut out the number 60 with my Cricut on permanent adhesive. Then I used Armour etching cream to etch “60” on the front.

 


 
 
 

The second gift is a different take on the “Things I’ve Learned” gift. We gave this to my mother-in-law for her 70th birthday and had my husband and his three siblings choose pictures (some from their childhood and some from today) and write about 70 things they learned from their mom. I use Blurb for these photo books because I love the quality of their product and how easy they are to create. I set up a Blurb account and gave everyone access to upload their own pictures and write their own text, it was super easy to put together!

You might be wondering, how do we come up with the “things I’ve learned?” Here are some tips:

1) Don’t worry about duplicates: we had very few and they were slightly different so they worked!

2) Let the pictures guide you: pictures can often spark an idea that you wouldn’t think of otherwise.

3) Some of my favorite “things” to give you an idea of what we did. Gratitude, how to rock my babies, girls can do anything, how to fly fish, enjoy the outdoors, how to bake, you can get muddy but don’t come inside, pray, do everything 110%.

It was so fun to see the things they each chose and it is a treasure for mom. The grandkids actually love to look at it and I think it will show her posterity some of the things that make her so special to us.

I hope you found something you love in these meaningful milestone birthday gifts. What milestone birthday will you be celebrating next?

Happy Gifting!

Steph

milestone birthday gift ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Amy Marohl

Friday 6th of April 2018

I DO have a 16 year old who is about to get his license next month! This Lei is a fantastic idea! I absolutely love it! My favorite part of it is the mints so he can have "fresh breath"! Perfect!

The Gifty Girl

Friday 6th of April 2018

Thank you Amy! Good luck with your new driver (I'm 2 years away from that and already nervous, haha!!) Thanks for stopping by!!

Lori | Choosing Wisdom

Wednesday 4th of April 2018

Love these kinds of gifts. They are cherished because they are meaningful! Thanks for sharing some great ideas to get the creative juices flowing!

#WanderingWednesday

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.