Yesterday, I took a trip to central jerz to see one of my besties from college for her son's 2nd bday. H-Man is 2 already. Can't friggin believe it.
Side note: best part about being an aunt (besides having H-Man scream over the phone "BYE AUNT JACKI!!! BYE!!! I LOVE YOU!!! BYE AUNT JACKI!!!!" and actually be able to pronounce a "j" at 2....) is that I get to go to the children's section of Barnes and Noble, and go straight to Dr. Seuss. I may or may not have a slight obsession with Dr. Seuss.....still....at 32....
...ahem....
Armed with four of the most important beginner Dr. Seuss books a kid can have (we'll get into the more advanced Dr. Seuss books like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and The Lorax at a later date) (aside from the one and only, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish) - There's a Wocket in my Pocket, The Cat in the Hat, Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!!, and Oh, The Thinks You Can Think, I spread out on the dining room table to wrap them all up, only to remember that I have no baby/kid wrapping paper.
Naturally. Why would I check to see if I had any BEFORE I went out to get his gift? Because, duh, that would make too much sense.
I do, however, have plain brown paper, which is easy to dress up and make pretty. Also - 2-year-olds generally don't care about the paper - they just want to rip it off to get to the good stuff.
Mkay. So, how did I end up making brown paper look cute? Simple.
Fabric riboon and a cute tag. My cousin wrapped our Christmas gifts similarly this past Christmas, and I thought it was a fantastic idea. Simple and pretty. So, for H-Man, I chose three jelly roll strips that I had in my stash - all coordinating, of course - wrapped two around the gift, and then used one to tie the bow. The tag I made with a simple stamp I got at Paper Source, distressed the edges, and wrote the sentiment on the other side. Before tying the bow with the yellow ribbon, I attached the tag with twine to the fabric, which was then hidden from view after I tied the yellow fabric ribbon.
So easy, yet still cute and polished. You end up looking like you actually had it together when you wrapped this gift, even though if your friends could have seen you frantically running around the house trying to figure out how the hell you're going to wrap books with no wrapping paper, they'd wonder how you survive without wearing a helmet and elbow pads on a daily basis.
There you have it! A cute and simple way to wrap gifts! Don't have fabric remnants all over your house? Use ribbon instead! Get a roll of wide ribbon, and do the same thing. It looks just as awesome. Trust :-)
Much love ~~~
