She's Crafty//Wrapping Paper & Bows//

As I may have mentioned several hundred times over the last few months, Terrence and I will not be "home for Christmas" this year. We won't be in any of our homes. Instead we will be staying at a spa in Napa Valley (rough life) so that we can hurt both of our family's feelings instead of just one. 

Because of this, and because of our No Spend November, I decided to do the wrapping paper part of Christmas a little more frugally. (Not to mention how wasteful it is to use wrapping paper. The trees! Oh the HUMANITY! Treemanity?) 

Now, if you are a gift wrapping superstar, then maybe you don't give a good goddamn about DIY wrapping paper and bows. But if you're like me, and it's almost a travesty to ALLOW me to use perfectly good wrapping paper, then maybe try this out. Keep in mind, We didn't have that many gifts to wrap, just one or two things for each of our family members, and then a few things for each other. The gifts we bought for family were all magically in small to medium boxes also, so that made things simpler.

I kept my eyes peeled for beautiful Christmas catalogues. I'm sure you received several thousand in the last month or so.  Imagine my glee when we received the Restoration Hardware catalogue! After ogling it cover to cover a few times, and Terrence reminding me that we do not actually need any more furniture/throw pillows/blankets made from faux fur/ Venetian glass picture frames, etc when we live in a small 1 bedroom apartment which we share with two animals, I admitted defeat. But while everything he said was undeniably true, I could not simply throw away this magazine…It was too beautiful. So, I repurposed it. 

I used the pages to wrap gifts instead of wrapping paper. In some cases I taped together a few pages to make it larger. I was lucky because each of the pages was gorgeous. There were pictures of crystal snowflakes, handblown ornaments, vintage Christmas games,  Christmas candles, and twinkling Christmas lights. I then cut up some of the more brightly colored pages into strips, twisted the strips, taped them all together and made some whimsical bows. It was… fun! Terrence couldn't believe how nice it looked, even accusing me of "having someone else do it... or buying it at the store", which is understandable, as I normally am a great Mrs. Fix-it but have zero crafting ability. 

Above I have included pictures of the process and the final products. I am really pleased with them. I'm no Martha Stewart, but if you have a smidgen of ability or just persistence… try it out!

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas!

xx