Gift Wrapping and Why I Love Planning

Christmas is a big time for planning, no matter how you function. Being one who loves planning, you'd think I'd be all over this. Hah. WRONG. For the past three years, I have dutifully sat down on November 1st to write out a gift list for my loved ones. My list often consists of mainly handmade gifts. Cool right? Uh...not when you start planning in November. Nope. There is simply not enough time to get all the crafting, cooking, celebrating, and wrapping done before that Blessed Holiday. You would think after the first catastrophic failure of having a Handmade Christmas I would have gotten wise and started earlier. Nope. Two years in a row of Opps-I-Started-Planning-Too-Late.

Never again.

This year, I decided to actually bunk down and DO IT. I started planning in August. I found my gift list from last year and revised it. Checked out my yarn stash, set aside skeins for projects, researched patterns, sneakily asked the right questions to the right people to get ideas, shopped sales for the things I was going to purchase. It's December now, and I feel very confidant that I will actually be able to have a 75% handmade gift Christmas this year. VICTORY.

 
I felt very very unwell about starting planning so early. I hate how stores are pushing the shopping season further and further forward. But after some soul searching, it became apparent to me that this planning ahead junk was the best decision. I want the Chirstmas season to be a reflection of the true meaning of our celebration. I want to spend December with family and friends delighting in the greatest gift of all: our Savior's birth. Being able to trade holiday stress for the excitement of making everyone a gift means so much to me. Ya feel me?

All the time I have put into planning things out this year has paid off already. I have been able to do something I have wanted to do for...forever: wrap all my gifts in coordinating paper. This sounds silly, but I seriously have been dying to do simple, pretty wrapping for so long. None of this Christmas-Eve-midnight-taping-your-hair-to-the-box stuff. No more. So, without further ado, my style of simple, pretty wrapping.

I love labels and stickers. If you want to capitalize on the many free printable gift tags available online, I would recommend investing in a Xyron Create-a-Sticker. I have the 1.5” model and I adore it. I use the permanent adhesive they make and just go to town.

Apple Butter Lid Lables

Love this thing.

Mhhhhhhhhh.

  I got these content labels from this lovely blog. They are festive, free, and match just about anything. I printed them on paper grocery bags. Free paper, free labels….what can be better? Not much, homedogs, not much.
 
I bought this brown kraft paper from Big Lots. It was maybe $3 for the roll? Not bad at all. It is durable, simple, and has a nice subtle glitter to it that just ups the festive level that much more. It’s easy to cut, fold, and draw on. If you have kids, it would be adorable to let them go to town doodling holiday things on the paper before you used it to wrap. Seeing as we don’t have any rugrats yet, I had to doodle on my own. 

I found the gift tags here

 

dat monkey

  Side note: I’m big on peppermint of any kind, so of course I put candy canes on the gifties. Plus, they went with my red theme. Yaayyy!!

I scored a big box of canes for $2 at Big Lots!!

These handmade labels are a part of a big set of fun things from EverythingEtsy. Again, they are free and totally compatible with printing on paper bags. I cranked a bunch of the red ones (there are many colors!) through my Create-a-Sticker.  Poifect. 

I feel so fancy

These big tags came from here. I wrote a lil blurb about the gifts on the back of them as well as the care instructions for the knitted goods. Super handy, and still festive. 

Well, that about wraps up my gift wrapping, for now. These were just early gifts for family who I will not be seeing on Christmas. They loved them! Yay! 

How do you plan for Christmas? Have you done a handmade holiday?
Lots of love,

Carolyn