Christmas Wrap-up #1

Posted by Ethne~

 

I couldn’t end the Christmas season yet without summing up a few fun things from Christmas. 

 

There were many wonderful things, and I wish that you enjoyed the people and traditions that are special to you as much as we did.  One of my favorite parts is watching people open their gifts from us (though I won’t lie, I’m excited to open my gifts too – at the top: the black diamond earrings and necklace pendant I received from Shaun and the girls.  I chuckle as I write this because that’s kinda like receiving coal, which, technically my black diamonds are, right?  Just 3 billion-year-old coal).

 

A new tradition for me was discussed in my post last week about the Bowdabra.  I think making the presents so gorgeous is awesome.  And remember how I mentioned that my sister-in-law Mel was hedging her bets that she’d beat me again this year with bow awesomeness?

 

 

True dat.

 

She was right.  I did a pretty good job wrapping for several of our family members, but I finished Rich and Mel’s gifts toward the end of the season (these were our DIY gifts that I’ll tell you about in Part 2 of my Christmas wrap-up).

 

So Christmas Eve I had everything finished and needed to do that last push of wrapping.  I had the girls’ stuff to wrap, too, and of course I put that off.  What I envisioned in my mind was the wrapping taking 30 minutes.  As usual when it comes to creative projects, I missed the mark entirely in my time estimate.  (Rich has labeled this phenomenon ‘Hedren Standard Time’ but that’s a convo for a different day.)  It took more like an hour+ and the girls were fussing and pounding on the door because they wanted to help with whatever they suspected I might be doing. 

 

Long story short, the ribbon beauty in my mind turned into tying on some curling ribbon and calling it good.  I knew Mel would have me beaten for sure.  And I was too right.  These are what my gifts looked like:

 

 

Mel’s wrapping was BEAUTIFUL!  Each gift was a masterpiece.  Here are a few photos of her gifts – don’t they make the Christmas tree look GORGEOUS??

 

 

 

And the funniest part is that Mel is such a nerd that she told me that she already thought of how she’d be wrapping our gifts next Christmas.  Whatever! 

 

I made sure to save all of the ribbons so I can re-gift them next year.  Mel makes fun of me for this (as in super-dramatically rolling her eyes), but I told her that I’d always do something new for her, so she can’t complain.

 

Tomorrow, the DIY challenge results.  I think everyone won this contest because all of our gifts were totally cool.  You can be totally THRIFTY and have great gifts, my friends.