If it’s your child’s first Christmas, or even second for that matter, you’ll currently be wondering what to buy him/her for Santa’s big day. Family and friends will be showering your little prince/princess with toys, clothes, things that make a mess, things that make a noise, so how can you top that? If you’re a practical scrooge then you might be so brave as to not buy anything at all – after all, what does a 1 year old know about receiving Christmas presents anyway – but if you take this route you risk feeling guilty for the rest of your life. And if your child ever discovers that you never bought anything for his/her first Christmas, then I am sure you can imagine the repercussions. Luckily, I am here to help you avoid such pain and suffering.

My top tip is that you pay a visit to the Royal Mint website where you can buy your child a lovely gift that will be treasured for decades (or until your ungrateful brat needs to raise some money to buy a new pair of trainers). There are some cracking ideas to suit all budgets, and coins are shiny and metallic so they just happen to fit most Dadget criteria (apart from the lack of batteries).

£5 will buy you a presentation-cased £5 coin for the London 2012 Olympics, while £9.99 will buy a presentation set of UK coins from 1 p to £1 in perfect 2009 condition. £19.99 adds a few special £2 coins to the 2009 collection together with a special baby-themed folder. For larger budgets there is the £65 baby-themed gold bullion quarter sovereign, the £112.50 half sovereign and the £199 sovereign.

So there is clearly a gleaming coin for every pocket, and they also make great Christening and birthday gifts too – either for your own child or somebody else’s. On second thoughts, you need to buy other people’s kids those messy and noisy presents, so keep the cool coins to yourself.

I just wanted to share a great gift idea for your child’s grandparents, or perhaps even for yourself. Zumyn allows you to create a mosaic photo of your child using your entire collection of baby photos. The web site’s photo upload tool compresses your pictures before uploading (saving you plenty of time), and the clever Zumyn software will then arrange your photos to represent any particular picture you choose. It’s free to use, but you can pay for prints on photo paper or canvas if you like the results.

For Henry’s 1^st birthday we took a photo of him and then used Zumyn to turn it into a mosaic using every single one of the 2,400 photos we have taken of him since he was born. We treated ourselves to a canvas print and the result really is stunning. Sat in our lounge we can see the overall image of Henry with his cute little cheeks, but close up we can pore over all the great memories from his first year.

The cake has been eaten and the odour from your pre-party poo has finally dissipated. So as your party is winding down, your little guests are now starting to wonder what’s going to be in their party bag. The party bag says a lot about you as a parent – are you cheap and cheesy, or generous and sophisticated? Well, how about using the party bag to prove your Dadget credentials by giving a hi-tech gift that the kids (and their parents) will be talking about for months to come?

My top party bag tip is to use the appropriately named GoDaddy.com to register a domain name for each of your guests. How cool would you be if every visitor to your party went home with theirname.com registered and paid-up for 12 months together with a free starter web page and e-mail account? You really are the coolest Dadget dad in the world!

If your wallet can’t stretch to the £6 per child for a .com, then you could plump for a .info at only 66 pence per child – what a bargain! Of course, you will always encounter a few snivelling little brats who really wanted a matchbox car and a packet of sweets, but life is full of disappointments.