The gifts are wrapped and under the tree! Actually, they’re upstairs in my office because someone in our house is addicted to unwrapping presents ever since her 2nd birthday and at the very site of a gift runs up and tares off the paper. Yes, I posed these under the tree and immediately brought them back upstairs when I was done. Anyway, here are some photos of the finished gifts all wrapped up with my black and white and gold ribbons and homemade gift tags.

Have a great Christmas Eve All!

So we’ve figured out what ribbon to use to wrap our Christmas gifts – now on to the gift tags! I decided it would be fun to make a few tags myself and thought I’d show you. There is no real tutorial, but here’s how I put my gift tags together:

To make your own gift tags you really just need thick card stock and stuff to decorate with. I used: paper cutter, markers, ink pad, rubber stamps, washi tape, and card stock. Not shown but super important: hole punch and string to attach to gifts.

Cut out your card stock into gift tag size rectangles (or squares, trees, snowmen, any shape, really!) Decorate your tag – I used a combo of washi tape and rubber stamps. Above, I’m making a Christmas tree with gold washi tape.

I like to add a little “to” and “from” stamp as well.

And don’t forget to punch a hole!

Ready to attach to wrapped gifts!

By now, all (or most) of your shopping is done, right? And now it’s time to WRAP! Some folks find this to be a daunting task and I guess that depends on how generous you’re being this year (aka how many gifts you’re giving) as well as a big question: whether Santa wraps the gifts at your house or not. Growing up Santa just popped down our chimney, set up our gifts in the appropriate location (I had the couch, my sister had the big chair), and dashed away to the next house. Now Santa does the same thing for our Z… I will also say there is added wrapping effort made to those gifts that “leave the house” so to speak…gifts for friends, my in-laws, etc… Do you wrap gifts for your kids and husband/boyfriend a little more casual than others?

All of that said, I thought I’d share with you my gift wrapping strategy this year on thosefancy-wrapped “leave the house” gifts. Next week a tutorial on some cute, easy washi gift tags followed by some pics of the finished product. Today, we’re talking ribbons. After I took a little inventory of our wrapping paper I decided on a theme this year… I walked right by the traditional Christmas ribbon aisle (after snapping this photo of course)…

And decided on black and white and metallic! See, we had plain red and plain green rolls of paper so I thought patterned black and whites and maybe gold or silver would look great, right? And so festive. So after much thought I decided on these four…

More next week!