string wrapped presents and cards and cookies!

Do you get as excited as I do about giving gifts? I love to find just the thing, and then to see the surprised, happy look on the person's face. That's pretty special! (I bet that's how God feels about giving gifts to us, too...)

Part of what gets me excited about the gift is how it's presented. Extra time and creativity put into the wrapping just makes it feel full of thoughtfulness and love! This is why it takes me a good week to wrap Christmas presents. I just want each one to look great on the inside and the outside!

This year, I closed some of the tissue-wrapped interiors of boxes with monogram stickers or letters to spell out the person's name. I added jingle bells to some, made individual gift tags, even made some of the gifts!

Each year, I like to go to the post-Christmas sales and pick up cards, wrapping paper, ribbon, tissue, and anything else to store for the next year's wrapping. I'm pretty good about guessing how much I'll need, but this year, I ran out of ribbon! Gasp!

I saw this idea somewhere, possibly here? and it sure came in handy. The last presents to arrive in the mail this year were for my brothers, and so it didn't really matter that I was out of ribbon.
(Shh... let's pretend I meant to do this all along. Yes.)

I wrapped the present in the middle with the last of the gold metallic kraft wrapping paper, and had a wide strip left over. Then, I wrapped the other two in kraft paper, using the leftover gold strip as a wide "ribbon" across the middle of each. For the gold-wrapped package, I added a strip of leftover plaid wrapping paper.

Next, I wrapped red cotton string around and around and around and around one of the kraft wrapped packages. It really didn't take very long!

The spool of string sat nicely on one of the dining room chair posts. Norah-kitty was rather delighted by this. I remembered that I have metallic gold thread, so that went on, too. Tucked in a tag, and it was done!

For this one, I first wrapped red around the middle, being careful to line up each wrap of string with the next. Then white cotton string went around the outside of the red string, followed by gold thread and another wrap of red. Pretty!

The last present is for my handsome husband. His gold-and-plaid wrapped gift was finished off with a wrapping of red and green string, with some gold metallic thread to give it a bit of sparkle.

On to the card! I feel like with each card that I made this year, I got more and more creative. I love the way this one turned out! Merry Christmas, Sarah P.!

My friend, Jamie Z. came over for cookie making and tea last Friday, and these are some of my favorite cutouts.

I took waaaaay too much time on my Santa cookie, but I love how it turned out! Look at the little wrapped present and teddy bear in Santa's sack of gifts!

This Scottie dog was supposed to have a plaid blanket, and this is the best I could do! I'm pleased.

Throughout this week, I've also made a second batch of cutout cookies, Swedish ginger cookies, pumpkin pie, and Spritz cookies. I promise I haven't eaten more than...five? or six? Most are wrapped and ready to give! I wrapped some in parchment paper, tied with red and green string, and tagged with a festive fabric label.

Did you know that tape won't stick to parchment paper? Yeah, neither did I. So that was tricky, but I like how it turned out!

So with that, Merry Christmas, friends! I hope yours is full of peace, joy, and love.