19 March 2014

Simple Birthday Gift Wrap & Gift Tags


Thought I would share my gift wrap projects for The Bug's birthday this past weekend. The Man and I laughed about how much we wanted to get the gifts wrapped because we were so desperate to dig into her birthday cake that was taunting us in the fridge all afternoon. It was good motivation to get everything done and ready to celebrate.

The cake, by the way, was a family favorite. A very moist yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I think this is The Man's favorite cake but it's become a family favorite and just about the only cake we ever have. We make this cake maybe two or three times a year. I don't know why but for some reason we got in the habit of doing a bundt cake (it might be because it's less work for the often tired baker) and we drizzle the warm chocolate frosting over it. It was so tasty with some vanilla ice cream and big fresh strawberries. Just thinking about it is making my mouth water right now.


Anyway, back to the fat-free, calorie-free conversation about the gift wrap. I scooped up several rolls of this orange, pink and blue striped wrapping paper at a local store that was closing. We had a big grocery store and very run down bunch of shops just a block from us. One of those stores was an electronics/catch all shop that sold all sort of weird stuff new, used and otherwise.

The Man befriended the owner a few years ago and has purchased quite an array of things from him like iPods, a TV, dvd players, toys and a music keyboard. When the shop was closing I found this wrapping paper there for a dollar a roll. I bought out all the rolls he had and got a deal for a couple of bucks. It's my go-to paper right now. My all-time favorite colors together: pink, blue and orange are the three colors I most like to pair together and play around with.


I also made a little gift tag for each gift. We often recycle these and all the raffia I used was recycled from Christmas. It wrapped all the gifts for our family in December and is still in fantastic shape and in all sorts of sizes for future gifts. You know I can't throw a good piece of ribbon away.

It's a little scary but I have learned that I can save and use paper scraps as small as the size of a pencil eraser for many projects. But I have to discipline myself a bit or I would go insane. It is great to have a couple of gallon-size zipper bags full of paper scraps to make gift tags out of. I can whip up a batch within minutes and it's so much fun to play with paper and pattern combos. Here are close ups of three that I made for our little gift stack today.


I hadn't thought about it until right now, but you might be interested to know what exactly is in the wrapped gifts, right? Two neon stripped shirts, a gray cardigan with neon flowers, a navy blue and white striped flower headband, a little "slap" band watch, three Lego people we chose and assembled ourselves at the Lego Outlet, and a Lego Friends lemonade stand kit. You can read more about the rest of our birthday celebration adventure here. Here's a link to our birthday class treat for this year. Keeping our birthday celebration peaceful, happy and hopefully stylish. It was a sweet little party. Can't believe she's eight. Life goes by quickly!

all images by kalanicut

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