It's A Wrap

There you have it! Fifteen pretty little packages wrapped in my homemade wrapping paper. Perhaps you can spot one that you received -- I know that a few of my readers (Katie, Dj Jazzy, Lucy) each have a little-green-tree-festooned box in that picture. I can't tell you how delightful the reactions I got to the paper were. I truly didn't expect it to get any reviews at all. I thought I would make it, use it and feel good on the inside that I did my part to conserve resources and be creative. I didn't dream that the gift recipients would get such a kick out it, too. Lots of people saved the paper. No joke! Uncle Jim, Mrs. Sue Woodward, my dad ... and those are the ones I know about. How touching! To think that my wrapping paper was good enough to save! I watched several of my readers who had the chance to open one of the above boxes try to guess what part of the two phrases they had received. If you recall, the options were, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end."
I really enjoyed adding buttons and bows and various other doodads to each present. The pallet of green and off-white was really easy to work with. Red added such a pop and buttons dressed the packages up and made them very snazzy. And yet, a simple (and heavily hot glued) pine cone kept the paper feeling very natural.
Lots of design magazines and blogs really pushed for a homemade Christmas. And while I didn't have time to home make gifts for everyone on my shopping list, I was pretty excited to have homemade paper. I'm definitely going to be doing something like this again next year. I already have some ideas (and I'm 99% sure I will have forgotten them by next year, but just in case I wrote them on stickies and put them at the top of my Christmas decorations box on the top shelf of my closet). I hate to forget a good crafty idea.

No One But Us And The Indians

I did the Charlotte Collins Thanksgiving Classic invites this year. And above you see the results. Oh and my mom is the RSVP contact. Hi Mom! That was actually lots of fun, writing that up for everyone in the you-wouldn't-believe-it extended family. I think I'm the only spawn of my generation to know who everybody on that list is and how they are related. And as much fun as I had with the invite its self, I was really having a blast with the envelopes. And then I had lots of fun making jpegs of all the envelopes, as you can see. This is a bit ridiculous, I realize, but I liked some of them and wanted to show them off.

Not wanting to reveal these peoples' names and addresses, I tried not to show full envelopes. Well, all except Mary, but she already moved out of that place and now lives in Spain. So if you were trying to track her down or if she is secretly not a part of the family but has indeed been a part of the FBI witness protection program since five or six days after her birth (which is about the time when I first met her), well, you are too late in finding her on Nueces in Austin. So about the above, I'm a big fan of the new "A" and below is the old "A" but it is paired with the new "M."

I don't know why I liked this one so much, but I thought it turned out pleasantly so here it is for you to admire.

The new "A" and "M" on my nana's name.

A Berage Of Holiday Posts

So in typical Cool Kids Crafting style, and when I say "holiday" posts, I mean I'm reaching all the way back to November for a last look at Thanksgiving. I decided to give myself the gift of stress-free holidays, and for the most part I achieved this modest and self-serving goal. And I put off the crafting posts until now. But in the coming days (about two weeks), it will be like Christmas all over again! Yay! And who couldn't use an extra dose of Christmas in late January? Well, if you must, pull out the Bing Crosby Holiday album and warm yourself some hot chocolate or some spiked egg nog. I don't know what your particular holiday traditions include, but crafts and entertaining are a major part of mine. And after the holiday season posts are all hung by the chimney with care, I'll be showing you two paintings and introducing a new arena to my blog -- recipes! In the past I've done a bit of baking and shared that with y'all, but this is like meal stuff, meats, veggies, et cetera. So clearly 2009 is going to be a fantastic year for this little corner of the Web.