apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I am a HUGE sucker every year for Crate and Barrel's Marimekko gift wrap. I totally realize that it's going to get ripped to pieces on Christmas morning, but I just can't resist it. I just love looking at it, it's so beautiful.

I usually go to Thai Silks in Los Altos and get a bunch of colored silk scarves in different sizes to wrap gifts. Kids can use them for "playsilks" after and I can always grab a bunch of them from the dress up box to wrap.

Also it's fun to go to IKEA and get their holiday bags for oversized gifts and put them under the tree. They're nice heavy gift bags which work for the oversized gifts -- kids want to rip in right away to the toys, and having a gift bag makes it much easier for them and me. Also the toy can be stored in the bag until we find it a permanent home.

I used re-used brown bags for most of our gifts. I had some scrap green felt, so I used a cookie cutter to make a tree pattern and glued a single green tree on each present. It looks very elegant, I think...

I'm either wrapping or putting items in stockings and santa sacks this year, but I'm planning on doing post-holiday shopping at fabric stores and second hand stores to find fabric we can re-use every year. Very excited about this idea :)

I answered number one - but that table with wrapping stuff has a huge roll of Kraft paper, and red string - because I love brown paper packages tied up with string too. Otherwise, I'm using found items and scraps to enhance the wrap: strips of oilcloth cut with pinking shears; the mesh protectors from wine bottles, the mesh tops from the little crates of clementines; tags cut from the fronts of last year's cards with pinking shears; and red crayons with which the kid can colour on the paper. I also have a remnant of burlap that's going to be used for a few gifts, sewn into bags if I get a minute to set up the machine, just wrapped around if not. For the lumpy ones, cloth is a bit more forgiving. I've run out of tape - but found that I like using my hot glue gun to wrap better!

My family has been reusing wrap for years. I don't know where it came from but we have Japanese printed heavy cotton paper that has been around for years. I suspect it came from when we lived in Japan, but it could have easily come from an art supply store. It is forgiving stuff - tape comes off of it easily and without ripping.

I tend to use magazine illustrations to wrap things, taping together pages to get a piece of paper large enough.

This year, since I'm not with my family, I bought things online and had them sent to them - no wrapping but the package they came in.