holiday gift wrap inspiration

It's crazy to think that Christmas will be here in less than a week. I feel like it was Halloween just yesterday. With that being said, last minute preparations for the holiday are in full force. I’m usually pretty good about getting everything done well before Christmas, but this year Christmas really snuck up on me and I still have a few gifts to purchase. Thankfully, nothing major though.

One thing that I always get super excited about is gift wrapping. I’ve been wrapping gifts for the family for as long as I can remember. In fact, I remember asking my mom if I could wrap my own gifts for Christmas as a kid. I know, it sounds weird but that is no surprise considering I asked my husband the other week if I could wrap his gifts for me, so he wouldn’t ruin my aesthetic. He did say that he was going to find the most obnoxious wrapping paper to wrap my gifts in, so I had my reasons. At the end of the day, he did wrap my gifts and they don’t look bad so I have to give him some credit. Although, I did stand next to him as he was selecting the wrapping paper to make sure he didn’t use something that was out of our theme for this year.

As you can tell, I mean business when it comes to gift wrapping so naturally it made sense to post about it. I’m not going to show you step by step how to wrap gifts. I’m sure you have that part down but I will do my best to give you some easy steps to take your gift wrapping to the next level.

I always start with a general theme and try my best to stick to my theme when selecting the wrapping paper. I will mix colors and patterns but it's still important that they work together and most importantly, that they work with your Christmas tree. This year, I did a mix of gold, silver and pearl white ornaments with pops of red and rose gold on my Christmas tree, so I kept those colors in the back of my mind when I went wrapping paper shopping. I found kraft paper with gold polka dots at Hobby Lobby and it was my personal fave for this year. I love love love kraft paper and the gold polka dots really worked well with my theme. I then found the joy wrapping paper at Target. I love sugar paper! They are one my favorite brands at Target. gold foil polka dot // hobby lobby

joy // target

I was obsessed with the red houndstooth and black and green plaid Hearth and Hand gift wrap last year so after Christmas, I stocked up and was able to use those two again. I did find them on eBay but they are a little pricey! black and green plaid // eBay red houndstooth // eBay

I love making little gift toppers and they're fairy easy to make. I know Christmas is already an expensive time of year, but it really doesn't cost much to make these and I can save it and reuse everything next year. It may sound weird to recycle this sort of stuff, but this stuff really adds up, especially around Christmas time!

I always start with jute twine and I either wrap it around both ways and make a bow or I wrap it around a few times around one side. I like using pine cones, wreaths, greenery and bells. I usually get the smaller pine cones and greenery from artifical stems. One or two stems can go a long way. I use a hot glue gun to adhere the pine cones and greenery to the gifts. The little wreaths are actually an addition for me this year. I found them in Targets dollar spot and thought they were super cute. They actually had red bows on them but my dog, Allie got a hold of one and chewed the bow off of it. Once she did that, I decided that I liked them better without the red bows and glued bells to them. Thanks Allie, sometimes your bad behavior gives your momma great ideas! :)

jute twine // target

gold bells // michaels

frosted pine stem with pine cones // target pine cones // target xoxo kristina