Gift Wrapping Ideas

I spent the day today wrapping gifts while the kids were gone. I needed to figure out what I had and what I still needed to get. Because I still have my crazy tree, I went with the lime green and red paper again. I threw in a little leopard and was excited when I saw that Ballard Designs had done the same thing this year. I have to say, I love to wrap gifts. I think that the outward appearance is just as important as the gift. I don’t know about you, but I LOVE to get a beautifully wrapped package because it makes me feel that the person giving it has put a lot of thought into my gift. Okay, so now you know my love language:) My dad has a lot to do with this love of mine. He absolutely despises the gift bag. No offense to anyone who uses them because I do… He just has always been the one to wrap our gifts IN PAPER…he still does, and I am 34 years old. But he delights in the tearing of the paper! I love that about him. So I say, if you are going to need to give a gift bag, dress is up a little. I had to use one on an oddly shaped present but I filled it with tissue paper and made a HUGE red bow out of ribbon to go on the side.

Adding ribbon and other gifts to your boxes and bags give your gifts a little panache. I like to hang ornaments from tulle and raffia when I need to use a clear bag for a gift. These were my oldest daughter’s teacher gifts for her dance teachers today.

Another thing that I decided to do today was make labels for my family’s gifts. I made a sheet of labels for each kid and for my husband so that identifying them on Christmas morning would be easy. I put their name and a cute little Christmas graphic on the label and printed them on my home printer. Another thing that I did to organize my gifts was to use different paper for each place we had to go and give gifts on Christmas. I used polka dots for my parents house, the lime green for my house and the leopard for my husband’s parents house. This will keep me from having to fumble through all the gifts under the tree to separate them out.

I found these really cute bird clips at market. I have used them several times to clip on the outside of a gift for a little something extra.

Here is a picture of my big bow on my giant gift bag. It’s much prettier than just a plain old bag. My dad would be horrified.