Christmas in the bag

12-21-09 creative brain
One of my best ideas, ever, came to me a few years back….. well, it could be at least 10 years ago…. I don’t remember now for sure.

My Christmas’s in Florida (pre-Greg) in the late 80’s, were all about abundance…. We all got carried away spoiling my young nephew and niece, during those years of materialism and excess.

The presents would be piled high around the tree and each year we kept saying we were going to cut back. After all the presents were opened, I’d sit there looking at a huge pile of wrapping paper and think…. What a waste.

So finally I did something about it. One year I bought some Christmas fabric on sale in January and made some simple bags. All I did was to just sew up three sides and leave one opened end. Or you can use the fold and only have to sew two sides… Don’t worry about hemming or anything fancy like that. Then just tie off the top with ribbon.

That first year I let my family keep the bags their presents were wrapped in, and I made more…. Then my mom made some…. And soon over a few years, we all had enough bags among us, to never have to use paper wrapping again. We exchange and recycle our fun cloth wrapping bags each year.




Clean up is easy around our house now!
Merry Christmas to planet Earth!

And yes, I decorate my large fig tree instead of putting up a real Christmas tree. I spray some pine scent from a bottle and it can even smell like Christmas without all the fuss. After all, we are always traveling elsewhere over Christmas, so no need to go over board here.