My sister-in-law’s christmas card had a doodle on the envelope with a little note saying “This is not a spiderweb. This is a snowflake.” So I wrapped her gift in a brown paper grocery bag held shut with duct tape with a note saying “This is not duct tape. This is string.”
Half of the presents under the tree have blue masking tape left over from painting. I am rather proud of the ball I wrapped that ended up looking like a huge piece of hard candy.
I’ve observed that sloppier wrapping jobs are easier for small children to rip apart… which is the whole point, really.
We save and reuse bags and boxes from year to year. We particularly like the gift boxes that fold flat and are preprinted with Festive Designs. They take up very little space, and they save time, money, trees, and frustration.
I CAN wrap presents, even oddly shaped ones, but I vastly prefer to spend my time doing other things.
Oh gosh, RickJay, that was a great OP. Listen, I’m right there with you when it comes to wrapping presents. I’m convinced, though, that I’m much worse than you. Honestly, I just finished up a two-hour wrapping session, and I’m exhausted, angry, a little sad, and I’m also anticipating humiliation tomorrow morning when my family sees the pathetic job I did.
However, thinking about your post DID have me cracking up (albeit maniacally) all the while. I just kept thinking about your quote on having thoughtfully purchased gifts, only to have them “presented in a wrapping style evocative of craft hour in a class for children with special needs.”
But anyways, I snapped a few pics of my “it’s the thought that counts” wrapping job.
Following the link below, you will see my first attempt at wrapping a gift this year. Notice that I didn’t have enough paper to completely cover the box. Also notice my gratuitous use of tape. This is not a joke people! One lucky family member will have to deal with this tomorrow morning:
Next is my crowning achievement. No, I did not wrap a box shaped like a rhombus. Somehow I had an excess of paper, and this is how it turned out. Also, the paper is cracking for some reason. I don’t know who bought it or why, but I get the impression that I didn’t handle it properly. Oh, and check out that pocket of air that bulges out of the left side. That shit is whack!
The other gifts didn’t turn out so hot, either, but I stopped taking pictures because honestly, I just wanted to get this wrapping business the hell over with.
My youngest sister is the champion gift wrapper of my family, owing to 18 months spent working at Williams-Sonoma. Her gifts are works of art. My gifts look like they were wrapped by special-needs preschoolers. Needless to say, gift bags and boxes are my friends, and so are gift cards.
It’s eight-thirty p.m. I haven’t started wrapping yet.
Fortunately for me, there’s very little to do. A set of speakers for the friend who’s staying the night (he’s been very helpful during the last few months with teaching kaylasmom how to use JAWS), a couple of presents for Michaela, and a set of stone coasters for kaylasmom. And I’ve set Michaela to wrapping the coasters.
Still, I’m bushed. I don’t know if there’s any gift trim in the house, so it could turn out to be just five packages under the tree, each wrapped the same way, and with only an impromptu “tag” to tell anyone who they’re for or from.
The more I wrap, the worse I get. It’s like Soul Calibur 3 or Super Smash Brothers- excellent the first try, pretty good the second, mediocre from then on.
Everything I wrapped this year was rectangular- books or boxes of Pocky- except one tube of stickers that don’t apply because it’s a weird shape. You could, without seeing me do the wrapping, arrange the presents in order wrapped by starting with the best and going to the worst.
That’s why the weird-ass colander I bought for my aunt is in a bag. Laziness, pure and utter.
We also have a selection of different sized gift boxes that don’t leave the house and just get reused every year. They’re pretty and festive, at least.
My contribution was initially ignored so I’m going to take a moment to jump up and down on this virtual soapbox until I am heard.
Obscene quantities of curly ribbon hides a multitude of wrapping sins.
Cheap paper? Torn corners? Inept taping capabilities? Multiple versions of wrapping paper?
$0.99 worth of multiple shades of curly ribbon strategically wound around the package and all is forgiven. Trust me, man - I’ve actually been ASKED to wrap presents. Not cos my tape ‘n’ paper job is the shizznit, no - it’s because I put so much freakin’ ribbon on the package that everyone goes OOOOOHHHHH over the bling.
No one gives a shit about the tape ‘n’ paper. They’re all looking for the bling. Wrap it in the funny pages and duct tape but top it off with a bow and a $2 glass ornament and you are SO in.
Quoted for truth! Shove your gifts, paper and tape into the monkey cage at the zoo and odds are you’ll get back a present that is better wrapped than anything I could produce, but I got TWO compliments on my wrapping this year simply because I added ribbon. Apparently ribbon has what I call the “Ooh, shiny” effect, where people are so distracted by the shiny that they fail to notice the gift is slipping out of the paper in places.
I was nearly inspired to start a thread on “Stereotypical Gender Attributes You Don’t Possess” after doing my gift-wrapping this year. I don’t love shoes, I can’t understand why anyone would decorate their fingernails and I cannot master the intricacies of putting paper around objects neatly. I fail at girl.
Tell me about it! It took me forever to get this one last big package wrapped; the cat was everywhere! Playing with the ribbons, under the rolls of paper… Finally I somehow managed to get it finished. Looks pretty good too, I must say. Thank goodness the cat decided to… the…
I’m awful at wrapping. Well, maybe not awful, but certainly not good, either. I’m not great with the whole “spatial perception” thing; I blame the smidgen of Arnold-Chari syndrome that I have. Not coordinated at all.
My SO, on the other hand, is fabulous at the gift-wrapping; I asked him to do most of mine this year, actually. Came out wonderfully!
3M (the makers of Scotch tape) make little dispensers that pop out one perfect little rectangle of Scotch tape, Post-It fashion, at a time. They even make dispensers that go on your wrist so you always have them right there.
Oh, my – is this why everyone is freaking out? Good heavens, let me emphasize – MAKE EVERYTHING RECTANGULAR or at the very limit, cylindrical. Otherwise you’re just buying headaches. Anything that’s not rectangular I put in a box, bag, or envelope. (If you buy festively patterned gift boxes at the dollar store, you needn’t even wrap them – just tie them up in ribbons and plunk on a bow.)
My cat, lacking any instinct of self-preservation whatever, is obsessed with eating ribbons. More than just about anything, sometimes more than his actual food or catnip. You cannot leave ribbon anywhere accessible to the cat under any circumstances or he will hunt and devour it. He’s been known to tear apart bows and eat the ribbon from those. Never mind the six hours he spends yacking it all up afterwards (many are the piles of cat barf I’ve scooped up with tell-tale lengths of ribbon in the middle).
What can he possibly think they are? Did the primeval Libyan wildcat feed exclusively off the rare North African ribbon stoat or something?
A friend of my mother’s says that her cat will come running as soon as he hears her get the ribbon out. It doesn’t matter if he’s dead asleep; if there are ribbon sounds, he’s there.
I’m probably the worst giftwrapper of any Grandma in the known universe. I hate wrapping and I suck at it. I wrapped gifts last night at 11:00 pm before falling exhausted and fed -up into bed. For one reason or another I am giving more cash gifts than otherwise this year and in a spectactularly unusual-for-me display of gift-giving forethought I bought some cool little animal-shaped boxes when I was at the Field Institute of Art in Chicago last October and I am putting the money gifts in those boxes and handing them out unwrapped.
No one expects any different from me, I’m the family disgrace gift-wrapping-wise and proud of it.
OTOH, I am taking dinner rolls to my sister’s house as my contribution to dinner and they will be jewel-like in their perfection of appearance, ambrosia-like in their perfection of taste.
We all gots our talents.
Merry Christmas to all.
eta: when cats eat ribbon, they don’t always barf it up. Sometimes it goes, you know, the other way? And . . . I will say no more.
I doubt it. My mom doesn’t even bother to remove price tags or put any effort into her gifts (for her children and grandchildren alike). This wouldn’t bother me so much if she didn’t make a point of mentioning that she simply couldn’t be bothered to remove price tags, etc. Nothing says giving like conveying a message to the giftee that the whole thing is a pain in the ass to you.
(Why, yes, I did just get though the Christmas ordeal with my mother…)
Oh, dear. I’m sorta secretly afraid that’s what my family might think of me. I hope not. I like the gift-giving part and often (not this year) put a great deal of thought into choosing the perfect gift. But I do hate the wrapping.
No, no…I’m sure they like your gifts just fine! Animal boxes sound adorable!
It’s when someone hands you something and says, “Now, I got you a gift card because I hate shopping and…really…I needed to get you people something.” Well, that just sucks all the fun right out of it. Even if you’re thinking that (and I, for one, LOVE gift cards, so it’s not that), don’t say it!
Anyhow, I sound very ungrateful and I realize that. The family visits take a lot out of me so I’m venting a little.
Well, if I want to freak myself out and imagine an angsty Christmas day, I allow myself to imagine that my crazy brother Jim will be there. Thankfully, I know he won’t. I can put up with my brother-in-law’s father - once a year won’t kill me.
Actually, I know I’m lucky, those of us who get together for Christmas get along pretty well and it’s a nice thing. We will have a bit of sad as my sister died last January and we all know that my Mum, who’s 84, probably won’t be around for that many more. I’ve spent every Christmas of my life, so far, with my Mum. 65 Christmases.
Hm. This isn’t a very pitty post.
Yeah. And goldang road plough left a 5 foot high snowdrift at the end of my driveway.:mad:
