Christmas Wrapping

This year I am making a real effort to be environmentally-conscious in my wrapping. Wrapping presents are probably my favorite part of Christmas. Around Thanksgiving, I start spying the different papers on the market. Pier One, Target, and especially, The Container Store always carry festive assortments. After careful research and a gut instinct, I buy my ensemble for the year. The wrapping I choose is not over the top or obnoxious, just a couple of coordinating papers and matching wide ribbons. I do not buy all pine cones, bells or anything else to adorn the gift, just paper and ribbon. Name tags aren't even on the gift. I thought since I was minimal in my wrapping the Earth would forgive me for being gratuitous. Well, not this year. The guilt has approached and surrounded my house.

For the past couple of weeks I have been researching alternative gift-wrapping options. Don't bother people, the alternatives are weak and few. Besides being environmentally conscious, my second priority for this project was spend less. Stamping and painting my own was out of the question. I salvaged a large roll of printing paper, but it is too thick to wrap nicely. I also did not want to spend the entire day moving furniture to create an assembly line of stamping and painting. Trust me, if I spent that much time on the paper, you all would never be allowed to open the gift. I would be way too emotionally involved in the paper to just throw it in the recycle bin. For your sake, I nixed that idea.

My next idea was newspaper but not the comics. I like the black and white of the paper. I could still put a nice bow or ribbon. Plus, I saw an idea of adding a strip of wrapping paper around the package for an extra splash of color. I think I found my answer.

Last night I collected my supplies to wrap some gifts. I had the Sunday paper, ribbon and paper from Christmas past, tape, scissors, etc. Here are some life lessons I have learned about newspaper wrapping paper.

1. When you hand out the gifts, make sure you also hand them a wet reusable washcloth. My fingertips were black. I know it's to be expected, but seriously, this was ridiculous. Have they recently changed newspaper ink? I will not be wearing my white pants for Christmas.

2. You may want to befriend someone who reads a newspaper in a foreign language. There are many tragedies in our world and the newspaper likes to report all of it. The economy, Blagojevich, war, terrorism, there's even some Cholera outbreak. These headlines do not make for festive wrapping. Even the movie section (Zack and Miri Make a Porno) was no hope. At least with a foreign language newspaper, you don't know that your paper says, "10 mauled by bear."

3. The two-page spread of the newspaper is too small to wrap anything of a decent size. You end up piecing a separate sheet to the bottom, using additional tape and getting your fingers dirtier.

4. The black and white of newspaper is really dull drab gray. All my gifts look a smudgy, dirty and bleak. They look sad. It looks like Christmas at Tiny Tim's.

I tried to take a picture of them with my phone, but I can't send a picture to email with my new phone (but I could with the old one). New technology is a pain. I will take a picture with my camera, but I don't know when you will ever see it. I will try to make a real effort. The picture attached is pretty accurate though.

Here are a few gifts under my tree. God Bless us, every one.