Yesterday, I finally finished wrapping the gifts that are in my house. Most of the presents were already covered in old newspaper, but they were lacking bows. I had saved most of the ribbon from last year's gifts, so I reused that first. Then I had two new spools of lime green grosgrain. Those are now gone. Then, when I realized that I was going to have to trudge out into the windy cold for more ribbon*, I decided that was ridiculous. I searched the house and found some red mylar ribbon from something like five years ago. And, voila, the gifts are beribboned. We made gift tags out of S's old art, and then S helped me put the gifts under the tree. She also helped by taking a marker to several of the packages, but that's cool with me.
She then requested a present of her own. When I told her that I didn't have a gift for her, she said, "Hey, what about my Kessel and Freddles (Hansel and Gretel) book that we bought yesterday?" (Note to the Reading Rock, I am not cheating on you.) All she wanted was to unwrap something. I taped a piece of newspaper to her book, and she was so happy. It was pretty cute. I fear that there will be lots of needless wrapping of old books and toys in the days to come, but she was very sweet about it. She got all excited and gushed, "Oh, thank you, mommy. I love it." So, maybe I'll consider it as practice for showing gratitude when receiving gifts.
And, that's that from here. It's a pretty simple existence. Just the way I like it.
*I am still working on being green with the gift wrapping. There has been zero paper purchased. The new ribbon was purchased long ago and has been sitting in my ribbon basket for months. I use a lot of tape, but I am not about to make paste to wrap gifts. I've got to draw the line somewhere. I didn't use any gift boxes this year. I just wrapped gifts as they are. I even shipped gifts in re-used containers. I'm feeling pretty good about it, thankyouverymuch. Of course, I was drooling over some really beautiful chocolate brown wrapping paper that I saw in a magazine the other day. And in the future, I'd like to start doing this...even though I adore grosgrain ribbon. How are you greening your holidays? Or am I a freakazoid?
3 comments:
We're going a little greener this year by using gift bags that we already had (leftover plain brown bags from the wedding that I'll put green or red tissue paper in). I'll be asking for them back from everyone who won't be reusing them themselves. If I have time, I'm gonna cut out images from old cards to put on the front, but if not, I'm totally fine with nothing on the front!
And honestly it's as much about the ease of it as it is about the green-ness of it! Baby C has put me behind in my holidays this year, so the thought of chucking the gifts into a bag is MUCHO appealing! :)
I'm doing a lot of the same stuff as far as wrapping goes. Otherwise, I'm trying to buy gifts from Amazon and Etsy, so that things are re-used (like books, mostly, I have CEREBRAL people to buy for) and hand- or home-made.
You are not a freakazoid! You are fabulous! I totally remember the days of filling up trash bags full of wrapping paper after x-mas morning, it makes me cringe now. I send out so few gifts these days (I'm a poor college student) that I'm still working my way through an economy pack of wrapping paper I bought almost 7 years ago! But all I have left is the christmas stuff, so even if it's someone's birthday, they get x-mas wrap!
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