In the year 1964 (or so) my mother (the queen of organization) procured a large spool of red yarn-like ribbon and then proceeded to wrap all gifts with it for the next 42 years. The spool was large, but it wasn’t that large! The moment a gift was open, she’d snag the ribbon back and start rolling it up to be returned to her stash. This red yarn sort of ribbon wasn’t even particularly nice, it was made mostly of polyester or some other such wonderful product, but boy has that stuff lasted. We have one string of it left in my stash and one present gets wrapped with ‘the ribbon’ every year, just for tradition’s sake.
My children have a habit of opening their gifts and then passing me the gift’s ribbon and saying, “Here Grammy”. Okay, so I might be just a tad like my mother, but in my defense I wrap presents with much nicer ribbon, so ‘it’ is worth saving! I might even snag the gift tags too, but only because they are really cute and hand-made and definitely able to be reused. Unlike my mother, I do not save wrapping paper….well, maybe a few pieces but only if the pieces are large and nice. (I am quite sure we did not save any of the ‘Justin Beiber gift wrap’ Number One Son found last year).
I have found I enjoy wrapping gifts, when I have fun supplies and set aside the time to wrap my gifts. I’m not so crazy about the times I need to fly out the door with that small ‘something’ for ‘someone’ and am hurried, behind and late.
I am quite sure I/we will never make the leader board at Pinterest for our ‘perfect’ perfectly wrapped family gifts. We are much too ‘real’ life here, especially once we throw in the pile My Loving Spouse bought and wrapped himself all in blue. Gotta love a guy that can buy and wrap his own presents! (My Dad was a great guy and never wrapped a gift in his life. He’d walk in the house hand the ‘gift’ to an offspring and say, “Here wrap this, please”.) My Loving Spouse’s paper reminds me of the year one of my brothers wrapped all his Christmas gifts in the Hanukkah paper my mother was saving. I am sure, said brother did it, just to ruffle her feathers so to speak and I am sure it worked.
Isn’t that the irony in life? We remember the quirky bits, mixed in with the beautiful or practical bits and that is what we hold on to and find dear… which leads me to suspect that The Offspring will have plenty of memories to hold on to as we’ve plenty of ‘quirky’ around here.
I’m a terrible wrapper and always end up with too much or not enough paper. And all my bows are made from that thin curling ribbon from the drug store. Although I do add a couple extra strands to “fluff up” the ribbon. My Mom would just curl the 2 strands and call it quits. Guess I’m carrying on her tradition?
That is so funny, as you are such a good artist…maybe you need to wrap stuff in clay!
All our Christmas gifts are wrapped in Sunday comics–no ribbon. But, yes, I save paper and used ribbon and I have a roll of yarn/ribbon that looks just like yours–only green.
Green??? In never really runs out!