The Christmas Wrapping Paper Solution. Frugal, functional and fabulous dahlings.

A couple of weeks ago I bemoaned the very very serious dilemma I was mulling. That of Christmas wrapping paper. To recap: the cheap stuff, is cheap..and nasty. It looks bad, cuts bad, covers bad. It's just bad. Apart from the fact that it is cheap, and it probably recycles better. Those things are good.

So what is a girl to do? Such problems. Such problems! Buying the glossy thick paper which will be ripped and cast aside on Christmas morning seems like literally throwing one's money away, but it is so much nicer to wrap with, it cuts more easily, it does not tear at the slightest provocation. Do I dare? Do I splurge? Buy the nice wrapping paper? Oh the agonizing. It just struck me that this paragraph is really pretty tragic.

So here's what I did. I bought huge rolls of brown wrapping paper (the type you use to wrap packages for mailing) on sale and at the Dollar Store. There's scads on a roll. I have yet to see the end of one. And it is thick, and it is durable. It cuts like a dream. It leaves no hint of what lies beneath. It is a veritable Fort Knox in the world of wrapping. But yeah..it's brown. Not all that festive.

I disagree, gentle reader, I disagree. I see the brown paper as quite charming. It brings to mind memories of getting "parcels" from my granny. Brown paper packages, tied up in string? I mean it's on the original Favourite Things List people! Before Oprah even!

Ok, then what you do is go to Big Lots. (There will most probably be Big Lots in heaven. I just wanted to let you know so there would be no surprises when you get there), and you buy some home-spun looking ribbon, and you tie those brown paper packages with that ribbon. That infinitely recyclable ribbon. And it looks delightful, and enticing and heart-warming and wholesome . Everything Christmas is supposed to be. And I'm not just telling myself that because I'm cheap. Really. It's quite lovely, and I probably will never go back. The other is starting to look quite garish in comparison. That's how wholesome I am becoming. Of course you could also break out the crayons and let your kids make the paper festive. But I am not quite that wholesome yet. I am a work in progress.

And then..behold-in the words of 4 year old Finny when he woke up to find the tree skirt buried under brown paper packages tied up in (pretty) string. "Now that's what a Christmas tree looks like!"

PS: In the past we have bought different paper to differentiate each kids' gifts without them knowing which is whose. This reduces the success of the guessing-what-is-inside-the-package- through-diligent-daily-fondling process slightly. Of course, now that we've gone all brown all the time, we can't do that anymore. So we assigned each kid a symbol which we drew at the bottom of each package. They are going crazy trying to figure out the gig this year. Of course you could have a different type of ribbon for each kid. But that seems less Alias-ish somehow. And we must get our kicks wherever we can find them.

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