To make it feel more like Christmas we crank the air to an all time low. We wear our Christmas PJs.
We start the morning with a fun breakfast.
Gather all our supplies.
We make a big pot of chili and other festive snacks.
When we first started this tradition QVC would be running all their new Christmas merchandise and we would wrap and order more stuff. This day was no different but we did get a Christmas movies in also. Thank you, Hallmark, for embracing the whole Christmas in July philosophy and running your Christmas movies this month. We have had our Tivo recording so we could save them up and have some to watch on our Christmas wrapping day.
I put up a large folding table in the office and have slowly been bringing out all the purchases from their respective hiding places. It is the staging area. When we get everything in this room wrapped, we can call it a day and crawl into bed. Yep, it will pretty much take us the whole day.
I am wrapping most gifts in my craft paper. If you missed the blog post on the paper, you can find it here. I will also be using the letters I made. If you care to read that blog post, it is here.
As much as possible, I will adorn the packages to the final state. However, for stacking purposes I won't be able to use some of my bulkier tie on's. Those I will tie on later when I bring the gifts back out to go under the Christmas tree.
We used some traditional name tags.
We used some of the letters I made.
And fortunately, there is someone in my house who does the prettiest hand lettering so she wrote directly on some of the packages.
A few years ago I used a 40% off coupon at Michaels and bought this stamp set. We used it to actually stamp the names right onto the paper. It was a purchase that I still feel good about.
I wrap with my mom and my two daughters. Many people ask if I wrap their gifts on this day too. Well absolutely!!! I simply stash their stuff in my room, box it up in there and then bring it out and wrap the boxes. If you think people have great anticipation after seeing their names on boxes under the tree in December, you can only guess how it feels to have that anticipation from July thru December.
I also have some wrapping to do for other people who I help with their shopping, so there are more than enough things to carry us through the day.
In all we wrapped about 150 gifts. This is a huge relief for us when it comes to November and December. Somehow I manage to still feel very busy during the holiday season but I cannot imagine having all this wrapping looming over me. Here are the final results of our efforts.
And in a stroke of true good fortune, as we were finishing for the day UPS came and delivered my new oragami shelf that I ordered from HSN. It took us exactly 5 minutes to unpack it and get it set up. We decided this would be the perfect place to store the packages temporarily.
Even if July is a little early for you, I still recommend setting yourself a day aside to wrap as much as you can before all the parties, family gatherings and the general hectic nature of the holidays kicks in. If you wrapped in October that would feel good, right? Or how about November.......maybe you could shop Black Friday and wrap on that Saturday. The point is getting some stuff off of your to do list and enjoying the real celebration of the season.
If you are wondering what is in all of these boxes, stay tuned. I can't share everything but I do have several gift idea posts coming up between now and Christmas to hopefully help you with ideas for everyone on your list. And please feel free to share any great ideas you have too. I can always use a little help myself.....especially with boy gifts.....I think boys are very hard to buy for sometimes.
Wrapping done........pretty soon we will be pulling out the trees. Oh, Summer, and your 100 degree temps.....you will not quench my Christmas Spirit.
See you back here on Friday!
What fun day!! Thinking maybe I need to start a tradition like this!! Thanks for sharing...
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