In quarantine one of your family members is bound to have a birthday. You may even think this is the worst time to have a one. However, both my mum and dad have had theirs and they have actually been the most special birthdays they have had in a long time because my sister and I wouldn’t have been able to celebrate with them due to being at school. Being in quarantine has given us more family time which we all appreciate.

I know that trying to figure out what to get your loved ones is hard because you can’t go to the store to buy a gift. But material gifts don’t define having a great birthday; it’s the energy and thought you put into the gift that makes it great. Yes, it would have been nice to buy my mum and dad something nice but instead, my sister and I thought of many fun ways to help their day feel spectacular. For our mum, we created a PowerPoint taking her to two destinations that we were supposed to go to this year but due couldn’t. Journeying through past memories in Slovenia was astounding. We also toke her to Spain. None of us can go on holiday now so it was an alternative way to take our parents on an adventure. Perhaps, you can take yours on their dream vacation, or draw them their ideal home in paradise too.

Moving on to more active gifts: we all know we are allowed to have one walk a day at 2 metres apart so we make the best of it. We: made a photograph competition to and see who could take the most artistic and fascinating picture, we strutted our stuff along our road to see who has what it takes to become a runway model and we created funky walks to see who had the funniest, weirdest, most unusual walk known to humankind. To make it more exciting we filmed our walks and sent our photos to our family members to judge. Our parents said ‘it was the best’ birthday they’d ever had.

There is an endless supply of ideas to make birthdays feel special during quarantine and the only thing that will hold you back is the extent of your imagination and how creative you are with it.

Antonia Edgington