My Beautiful Packages and How I Really Feel About New Years Eve.

I Love, LOVE, LOVE Christmas.  For me it is a wonderful family holiday that starts in early December when I start to buy gifts for my loved ones. I love finding the perfect gift.  I am not one of those people that can just grab something and move on.  I have to find something I know the recipient will love.  My ideal Christmas Eve involves cocooning inside with my family- we are always at my mom's- and just relaxing.  I usually end up scrambling to wrap the final gifts since I have a small-ish car and can't waste space by hauling pre-wrapped gifts.  Christmas day is all about gifts, kids squeals if delight, homemade cinnamon rolls, and a big dinner.  This year almost everyone got an iSomething so the afternoon was quiet and full of iPods, iPads, and MacBooks.  

New Years, on the other hand, meh, ain't my favorite.  I don't know why…maybe because my Fed Ex pilot hubby is NEVER around or if he is, he is too exhausted from just getting home from a big trip to actually enjoy the night.  Maybe because I live in snow country and have no desire to go to the big town party which is outside.  It's hard to say why I don't care about New Years Eve but I don't so while every blog I love is already posting party ideas and free printables for the holiday,  I am going to show you my gorgeous Christmas packages.

My Christmas wrapping had 3 different themes.  Why 3? Because I made one that I loved and showed before with the teal flowers and ribbon.  Then I took Margie's class Spark Your Christmas and she showed how to make a Junque bow.  Junque bow training has changed my life.  I am head-over-heels with them and ended up making two different color schemes.  The problem was I just couldn't stop making them so I had tons for the packages and several holiday decor items are now embellished with Junque Bows.  

 

First I made the beautiful silver, brown, and gold Junque bows.  I literally used ribbons from my stash…ribbons of Christmas past if you will… and tinsel garlands.  I didn't have as many textures as I would have liked- as Margie does- but I will next year!  I ended up using these bows to embellish the gifts for the men.   All of the adult packages were wrapped with plain kraft paper and I simply hot glued the bow right to the paper.   

After I made about 20 gold/silver/brown bows,  I realized I had a lot of red polka dot and red stripped ribbons that I bought for my living room decor before Spark Your Christmas inspired me to completely changed my decor to white, silver and gold.  I grabbed those gorgeous ribbons, some silver tinsel and, in what I can only call a stroke of genius, a bunch of candy canes that I had intended to put in apothecary jars and place around but no longer had a use for.  I wired the bows and hot glued the candy canes into the center.  I used the bows and the red and white wrapping paper to wrap all the kids gifts.  The paper came from my stash….bonus!

The red and white color scheme, the paper covered with typography and the candy canes made for really cute wrapping for the kids.  An unplanned advantaged was that it was very easy for the smaller kids to open the packages because I hot glued the bows in place without wrapping the package with ribbon first.

 The women got packages wrapped with kraft paper and the beautiful blue/teal adornments I made in early December.  I did wrap the packages with teal seam binding first.

 I love the way these looked.

This is the package my husband wrapped for me.  Notice the beautiful paper, the tight corners, the sweet little gift card….the grubby pieces of tape.

Notice the gift card it was an index card folded in half.  Ok, so he isn't nearly as interested in beautiful packages as I am.  He is interested in terrific gifts….a new camera for me.

Laters…