Wrapping Savvy Style….

This night finds me with about 27 pieces of peanut brittle in my stomach.  I couldn’t help myself.  And it’s strange because I’ve never been drawn to peanut brittle before.  It was in a lovely box of goodies from Butchie’s parents.  Did I ever tell you my husband’s name is Butch?  It’s his real name, I’m pretty sure.  It suits him perfectly.  Butch, Butchy, Botch as my Italian neighbors used to call him and the folks here call him Bush….in case you were wondering.  Anyway, peanut brittle.  The name suits it well too as it is brittle.  We didn’t need to bust up the pieces one bit.  It must have been a bumpy ride to the other side of the world for that little package.  I’d also like to thank the postal workers who did their part to help with that.  Made eating it a lot easier and faster.  My teeth hate me right now.

Wrapping.  I’ve done a fair amount of wrapping this week.  Each year I try to come up with something fun, but practical.  This year was paper bags.  I bought some cute ones at Ikea.  They came in an assortment of sizes, but I needed more of the small size.  I found some brown paper food bags in Sham Shui Po over in Hong Kong that worked swell.  But compared to the Ikea ones they were bland like mashed potatoes without pepper or gravy.  I tried stamping them with a snowflake stamp.  Salt.  Then I got savvy and put them through the ink-jet printer.  I’m probably the last one to figure this one out. 

Jingle All the Way to Jean….my mom.

I used clip art from Dover Publications free sampler for the bag art.  I’m not so clever with graphics and stuff so I did all my image sizing in Word. It worked for the most part with a few experiments.  Zip it up by folding over the top edge and zig zag stitching it closed.  For some of the bags, I stitched snowflake sequins in at the same time.  Make a bow and hot glue it to the top.  Done.  Cute.