Creative Gift Wrap

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★☆☆☆
By using materials on-hand for gift wrapping, you eliminate trips to the store and logging of timber for paper, as well as reduce energy for paper manufacture and distribution.

Money Saved: ★★☆☆☆
Depending on how many birthday and holiday parties you are involved in, the savings could amount to a fair amount of change!

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★☆☆
If you get creative, this can be a real plus rather than a limitation. Who really remembers what the wrapping paper on a gift looked like? But if you do something "different", they'll probably remember yours!

What We’re Doing
Although we have admittedly bought gift wrap paper from time-to-time, more often we have improvised. In the attached photo, we wrapped a large gift (writing desk) for Naomi just in a quilt. It would have taken a lot of paper to wrap that one! For some small gifts, the girls have painted or drawn artwork on brown paper sack material which we recycled. There was leftover wallpaper from one of our bathrooms that we've been using as wrapping paper. Also, we've got some old topographical maps that make interesting gift wrap!

A Little Humor
On the afternoon of Administrative Professionals Day, my co-worker and I finally found the time to get gifts for our secretaries. While at the store, my colleague noticed my disappointment when I discovered the shop didn't provide gift wrapping.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"They won't wrap the gifts for us," I answered.

"No problem," he said quickly. "I'll ask my secretary to do it."