40 everyday things for your bestie who turned forty!

So, its birthday celebrations again; another one of my oldie besties – Sanjana turned 40.

Frankly, the hangover of celebrating the birthday of one oldie bestie – Priya was still on when I had to plan this one. Why do all my besties have to be born within weeks of each other; it makes it so much more difficult to plan something unique and meaningful at such short notice?

But, when the going gets tough, the tough get going and I got one of those Eureka moments. No, I was neither in the bath nor under any apple tree; I was catching those 40 winks when that moment came upon me.

If you have known your bestie for over 25 years, chances are that you know everything she likes and gets her going… Hmmmmmmmm!

So, we decided to get her 40 of those everyday things that she favours highly. One of those was a scrapbook (she loves these trips of nostalgia) where we wrote the story of our (the three of us – Sanjana, Shalini & I) first meeting and her transformation that we have witnessed. Shalini has got the most amazing handwriting; we figured we should go back to how we celebrated birthday before technology took over.

Birthday card (not an ecard that is much more in vogue these days) made a reappearance too and when we wrote with our own hand, it reminded us of the preparations we would do during our birthday celebrations of old. The reward for that sheer effort used to be that beatific smile on our bestie’ face. We replicated that quite well this time; I must say.

Now for the ‘surprise’ part. We called Sanjana over on the pretext of a doctor’ appointment. Sanjana was so besides herself with worry that she sprained her neck but still made it in time to take me for my appointment. When Shalini and I yelled ‘Surprise’, Sanjana screamed at the top of her voice. That scared us so much that we forgot to burst the balloons as planned. Not to worry though; probably the balloons knew of our plan so they burst by themselves shortly thereafter without our intervention.

We presented Sanjana with the birthday card and the scrapbook and then recited to her the significance of each of our 40 gifts. She was so overwhelmed that she needed to be prodded out of her reverie several times. We had divided the gifts into the following categories with the overall theme color as PEACH & RED

• Clothing that we would love for her to wear; she can carry off pretty much anything
• Accessories to enhance her already gorgeous looks
• Personalized Decoratives to surround her with the feeling of how special she is to us
• Food that we know she absolutely craves

The bestie trio

She looked at the photo-frame (1 of the 40 items) with our favorite picture and said those words that Sameer said in the movie ‘Dil Chahtha Hai’ –

“Ya to dosti gehri hai ya tho ye photo 3D hai”!

Needless to say, there were hugs and selfies galore after that.

Give this idea a try if you want to surprise that special friend in your life; believe me, you will have your reward.

Happpppppy Fortieth dearest Sanjana!