The Art of the Parcel, revisited

Thanks for the lovely comments on my last post.  They brought comfort and cheer.  You are the bee's knees.  

And now it's already the weekend before Christmas, which means my kitchen table has been transformed into gift-wrap central, and everything on my holiday to-do list (cards, shopping, crafting, baking) is half done, or half undone, depending on my mood at any given moment.  But I love wrapping gifts, I truly do.  When I was a girl, I'd volunteer to wrap gifts for my mother and father, and I'd spend hours cutting the paper, folding over the edges, curling ribbons, and making gift tags out of Christmas cards from previous years.  I imagined being the woman at Filene's who got to wrap Christmas gifts for customers.  My dream job!  All these years later, I don't usually have has much time to linger over the gifts, but I still love to wrap them, especially for people like my sister-in-law Cate, who adore paper and ribbons and pretty boxes as much as I do.   

Last year, I crocheted little ornaments from the sparkly yarn above, and I attached one to each gift.  This year I've been making paper flowers.  I often save and reuse beautiful paper from the year before.  Or old pages of books . . . or old maps.  I even reuse tissue paper.  And, of course, I reuse ribbon.  A quick iron, and it's ready to go.  And I love creative reuse of containers.  All year I save the metal canisters that Republic of Tea tea bags come in and then I glue pretty paper on them and repurpose them as beautiful containers for small gifts.  I also love gifts that double as packaging, like a pretty vintage purse with smaller gifts tucked inside.

As far as opening gifts is concerned, I'm a sucker for Christmas stockings.  Bigger gifts are lovely, but the stocking has always been my favorite part of Christmas morning.  When we were kids there were certain stuffers we could always count on: a Lifesavers Storybook, a bag of M&M's, an orange, a pair of socks, and a quarter in the toe.  I loved those "regulars" just as much as the surprises.  As we grew older, Santa, always a hip guy, began to toss in scratch lottery tickets.

Okay, the sun's coming up, time to get cracking with that list.  Have a beautiful day, my friends!