wrapping presents

It's been a different week-before-Christmas than usual. I've been doing all the normal things - wrapping presents and making candy and playing in the snow with the kids - but I've had the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in mind all week long. It's hard, even when I'm in the middle of a perfect moment with my own family, not to start crying again for the families that were affected. We're praying for them and trying to hold our own family even closer as a result.

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So, many of my friends have been done shopping and wrapping for weeks already - weeks! I'm not quite so on the ball. I have a few little odds and ends to pick up, but mostly I'm just watching the mail every day for packages I ordered (I heart Amazon) to arrive. And in the mornings, when I'm home with the two little ones, I've been wrapping presents.

When my big kids came home and saw a bunch of presents wrapping in brown paper, they said, "I've never seem wrapping paper like that before..." That's because they're used to me wrapping presents in whatever wrapping paper I happened to buy at the dollar store. Mismatched, but bright and merry. This year I decided to try wrapping all the presents in very simple brown paper (still from the dollar store), string, and a few doilies for a simple, old-fashioned look.

I actually really love the look of the string on the brown paper (plus I've been singing the song from The Sound of Music all day). I added a few of my printable gift tags for a punch of color.

I think the string on this one looks a bit like a Christmas tree:

And I love the white lines of string over the doily here:

For this one I added a punched paper ribbon I made using Fiskars new AdvantEdge Interchangeable Border Punch Set.

Pretty, right?

It's a slick little tool that works with interchangeable cartridges to make punched paper borders and ribbons. There's lots of gorgeous cartridges I'd love to get (click on the photo above if you want to check it out).

I'll be watching the mail again today and wrapping some more while my little ones play (and sneak gingerbread men and bite their heads off when they think I'm not watching.)

Wishing you all a happy holiday season.