The Ghost of Christmas Crafts

Seriously, I’ve been possessed this year. Normally I’m not a huge Yuletide decorator, etc. I’ll maybe buy some lights, but I’m usually too lazy to get a wreath or tree, and even the lights will be strung up haphazardly or, as this year, balanced delicately on the trim around the window so that even the slightest gust will bring them crashing down, invariably causing one broken bulb to black out a string of ten in a row, which is far too many to try and bother fixing, so they’ll just stay that way. Honestly, when I was a kid my mom and I stopped having a tree the year I started high school when we had moved into a fairly small (700 sq. ft.) apartment. We had this ficus plant in the corner, and one year my mom put lights on it and a couple ornaments, which was kinda funny and cute. But then we just left the lights on, and we would just plug them in every December. Mmm mmm festive.

But this year, oh, this year, something changed. I’m not sure what it is – maybe some maternal kiddie-craft precursor to my biological clock now that I’m one year older and more of my friends are having kids, maybe I just have more free time on my hands, or I’m happier and more inclined to express my creative spirit, or more broke after buying my new car, or whatever, but this year I’ve been possessed by the Ghost of Christmas Crafts. Not only did I decide to a) undertake a huge crafty art project as one of my boyfriend’s presents, and b) get a bunch of digital pictures printed up all nice to work on framey-crafty projects and photo-cards and such, but this year, I c) actually MADE MY OWN WRAPPING PAPER. Yep, that takes the cake.

It was surprisingly easy and fun, too. I cut out the bottoms of a bunch of brown paper grocery bags (plus a couple of those sexy white Metropolitan Market ones), flattened them out, and used a sponge I had cut into two shapes (one star and one tree) and dipped the spongie-shapies into leftover paint from craft projects that had occurred years before, in college, when someone else forced me to actually bother buying art supplies, and sponged the designs (red star, green tree) all over the paper, and used my roommate’s hemp twine to tie it up. Kinda outdoorsy, natural-y, granola-looking – and damn cheap, let me tell ya. I don’t have *quite* enough to do all my presents, but given that every time I purchased a gift I asked them to wrap it in-store if possible, I think it should just do it, minus one box.

And lastly, credit where it’s due: thanks to my college pall Allison, I have the perfect plan in place for said remaining box. See, back at Bryn Mawr she taught me many things – how to appreciate sushi (THANKS), how to fold an origami box (forgot, sorry), and how to get free wrapping paper. Every time you purchase a book at Barnes and Noble (or any other bookstore, but B&N is a sure thing for this), you tell them it’s a gift, but that you’d like to write an inscription, so instead of giftwrapping could they please just give you a sheet of wrapping paper? You do this whether or not the book is actually a gift, and then bingo, you always have wrapping paper when you need it! So crafty. Pure genius.

So between my crafty-craftiness and Allison’s other type of crafty-craftiness, Christmas should be a cinch this year. Yahoo for easy and cheap! Eventually maybe I’ll upload some pictures of said homemade wrapping paper, but in all honesty I’ll probably forget, haha. Merry Everything to all!