2011 Christmas Gift Wrap: Recycled Wrappers

This is the the last leg of my series on gift wrappings for this year.

I could not sleep and focus for several days because I did not know what to do. I did not know what to do with the 10 electric toothbrushes that I got for my nephews and nieces. Wrapping the brushes individually was a major fail.

Buying brand new paper bags was the last thing that I wanted. I almost did. In my frustration, I got the most plain paper bags that I could find under the kitchen counter, designed them and put all ten 10 brush inside. The plan was to get the kids to line up as I hand them their presents one by one.

Lucky me, in Pasig where I work, plastic bags are banned every Thursdays. Stores give out brown paper bags instead of plastics. I had been looking for these bags. I searched for them in National, SM grocery and in the wet market. I could not find any. I found packs of paper bags in Edsa Central Market but each pack has 100 pieces.

Anyhoo, back to the Thursday-no-to-plastic-day, I overdosed on cavendish bananas from MiniStop just so I could get brown bags. Unfortunately,  Aki woke up early yesterday so I was only able to dress up these bags.

From our family to yours, we wish you  Peace, Love and Light

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Star Wars Snowflakes!

Oh yes there is such a thing.

If you love Star Wars, Christmas and working with cutters, then you will surely like this quick but not so easy craft.

I am not a fan of the movie but my boss is. Fortunately for her, I had time and scratch paper on my hands. I made and gave her this Master Yoda snowflake. 

The snowflake is far from perfect but my boss liked it so much she put it in a frame.

2011 Gift Wrap Part II: Accordion Circles and Doilies

Here is the part two of my 2011 Christmas gift wrapping series. There might be a part 3 and a part 4, if I find time tomorrow to take pictures and cover more presents.

Accordion circles. I have been seeing these circles as party decors. I think they look pretty on gifts too. Whatchatink?

Dainty doilies. I did not have time to buy them so I asked my SIL to get some from me when she went to SugarKraft BakeKraft, CookieKraft, this baking store in Mandaluyong.  Since they are only made of paper, I was expecting that a set would cost about 20 or 30 tops. But no! To my surprise, as set of ten costs 90 bucks. Although I still wish they cost less, I am quite happy with how they make anything, even a crumpled brown paper, look so dainty.

I am sure there are other stores that sell doilies at a cheaper price. I will try to find out. If you have leads, let me know ha.

2011 Christmas Wrap: Red, White and Brown

This post most likely has lots of typographical and grammar errors. It is 12:40AM, way past my bed time.  I promised myself I will post all my Christmas related blog entries before the 25th. Because I might be busier starting tomorrow, I will post everything now.

I was sadder than sad last weekend. What could be worse than death of a loved one? Two deaths in a span of 3 days. I so want to visit them but the lamay are far.  I tried to distract myself from my sadness by focusing my energy into one of my favorite activies, gift wrapping.

Because I want the gifts to serve as decors, I am trying to stick to a color motif and theme. I used craft and pattern papers and pretty-fied the gifts by adding red and white embellishments.

Contrast: Rich Velvet and Faux Pearls. My officemates got the pearls from Divi for only 13 bucks per string

Rickracks are my current obsessions! I want a giant rickrack and sew it on our wall!

2011 Christmas Decors

From casualties, let’s move on to our surviving decors.

This is our Christmas corner.

 Aki’s little tree is decked with a candy garland. So cute, eh? So cheap too. I got it from Uniwide for 50 bucks.

The unopened gifts from friends with the framed letter to Santa.

 The Santa advent calendar which we only use as decors. The pockets are too small to hold anything except for coins. Stockings are from Dapitan Arcade, Uniwide, from my mother-in-law and from my mom.

Christmas Casualties

Twenty eleven will not be written in our family history books as the year when we got our first proper Christmas tree. I have been wanting to have  one since last year but having a curious and notorious toddler always makes me rethink of what decors to put in our home.

Let me show you  the casualties so far.

I carefully filled this plastic Santa shoe with big and small blue baubles from last year’s decors. I spent at least 15 minutes because I want less spaces between the balls. Silly me, I forgot that Aki is obsessed with playing football and will get his hands err his feet on any ball he can find. As soon as he saw the plastic shoe, Aki emptied it and kicked the balls all over the house. Now, I can’t find the rest of the balls.

Some more casualties.

DIY Paper Drop Ornaments

With just two snaps of the stapler, you will have beautiful and elegant paper ornaments. All you need are strips of paper, a stapler and a string.

First, line up your strips and staple one end. The middle strip should be the shortest, and outer strips  should be the longest.

Gather the other ends, bending the strips as needed and staple.

And you are done! yey!

Ho So Easy Christmas Pillow

Step One – If you are like me who hates her own handwriting, ask a friend to make Ho templates.

Step Two – Run a running stitch with a red thread, along the edge. 

Step Three – Now, using a white thread, stitch the Ho appliques into the  red pillow.

More Christmas Family Traditions

Tradition # 3 – Letter to Santa. Oh yes, he really wants to receive a mouse and 5 fishes. On some days, the list gets longer. He also wants to get an elephant and a crab.

I recently discovered IShare and I am sooooo loving that site. All the printables that you can ask for in just one click, or maybe  several. Go go go!

Tradition # 4 – Happy birthday Jesus song. This is my way of teaching my two year old the reason for the season. Everytime we have receive a cake or cupcakes, we light a candle, sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow the candle before we enjoy our cake.

Tradition # 5 – Meeting Santa. I am glad SM Bicutan sees to it that the jolly old man visits our mall every year. Interestingly, unlike last year ( looking at the pictures makes me extremely sad, I will blog about it once I have ran out of tears), although Aki’s excited to receive Santa’s gifts, my little drummer boy was not in the mood to hug Santa.

Tradition # 6 – Opening our gifts on and only on Christmas Day. This is my 3rd year to try to stop myself from immediately opening my presents.  I was only semi-successful in my first two attempts. So far, this year, I have been successful.  

Christmas Tradition # 2: Aki’s Christmas Countdown

Presenting…

*drum rolls*

Aki’s Advent Calendar!

Advent calendars have 25 day countdowns but since I got lazy, this project did not fly until Monday this week. So from 25 days, ours only has 10.

The inspiration for this project came from Martha Stewart. See here for the original post.

Materials for this project

Twigs
Spray paint
The most Christmas-y socks that I could find in the MRT sidewalk. Only 50 bucks for 3 pairs!
Numbers. I downloaded mine from here.

Paperclips
Clothespin

Optional
Paper ornaments
Cute Christmas pillow

Close up

1 to 4

5 to 7

9

8 and 10