Perking Up "The Present"

Craig's friend has invited us to his daughter's Birthday this weekend so we got to shop for a girl for a change.  We found a super cute jewelry maker and I grabbed a couple extras while waiting in line (those sneaky displays always get me).  I really wanted to girl it up with the wrapping so we found a canvas bag for only $1.50 she can reuse, a pinwheel that acts as a big bow and clear pink wrapping.  It was so nice to be in my own little world putting together the pink, girly gift and escape my normal life surrounded by boys and consisting of boogers, farting and poop talk.  

I covered the large gift in the clear pink wrap and bunched the smaller objects together with the same.  The largest went snuggly in the bag first, I tucked the smaller one up front, slid in the pinwheel and wrapped one more bit of ribbon around the top of the bag tied off with a bow. It was so simple to make the gift look amazing!

Here are some other creative ideas for wrapping gifts:

I found these and other ideas from +Martha Stewart  here.  I wrapped Craig's white elephant gift for work in burlap using the style in the upper left corner of the first photo.  You can get a how to in pictures for wrapping with cloth here.  I also wrapped a few of the boy's Christmas presents using the woven method in the second photo which can be used for any occasion.  

I love this idea from brassyapple.com of adding jewelry to a gift bag, it looks so pretty and doubles as another gift.  

This idea is similar to the one above, but is done with a headband.  At simplyboldblog.com you can get the instructions for making this headband yourself or grab one you love from the store, slide it over your gift and you've got a great embellishment they can also wear.  

These are great ideas I found at linesacross.com for interactive gift wrap.  The tree includes rolls of stickers to decorate it with, which can be adapted to anything from a car cut out boys can design or maybe a princess for girls to dress up.  I think adding a photo would be great with stickers of  mustaches and different hats or accessories.  They also show a crossword gift wrap, I think is a great idea.  You should definitely check out the site, they have endless ideas for all kinds of goodies.  

How easy is this, a hole punch and paper...yes I can handle that, in fact I'm sure my two minions wouldn't mind annihilating some paper for me!  You can find this and other ideas at realsimple.com.