Thursday, December 5, 2024
WELCOME BACK!
We’re excited to welcome you all back to OGL
and we’re excited to welcome the month of December
and all its festivities, too!
But, before we get started celebrating the month ahead,
we need to find out…
How was your Turkey Day?
We hope that your holiday
was filled with lots of yummy goodness and time spent with loved ones!
We both had lovely long weekends, spent with family and friends
and we each are grateful for the treasured memories made!
We counted our blessings
as we cooked and we ate and we crafted, played, walked, cuddled and snoozed!
Laura’s family spent Thanksgiving in Madison, Wisconsin,
where Daughter J and her crew live!
We were blessed to spend the day with our SIL’s family!
It was a perfect - and a delicious - Turkey Day!
Back in Minnesota, Laurie’s family gathered at her house…
We enjoyed a wonderful dinner, an afternoon walk,
and some fun games as the evening wound down!
Today we’re kicking off the holiday season with a fun post devoted to
a GRAND way to wrap Christmas gifts!
In today’s post Laurie is sharing her creative idea
for wrapping her Christmas presents!
Keep reading for all her details!
Last Christmas I started seeing pics on the internet of people who wrapped their family’s gifts as cute snowmen. Each person received 3 wrapped boxes which contained their personal gifts.
I always love to try something new, and I was intrigued!
Since my husband is the gift wrapper,
I checked with him and he was game to give it a try!
We ordered a roll of white craft paper from Amazon and started collecting boxes! We did start a bit late in the month so we had to ask friends and neighbors for some help, but we ended up with enough boxes to create 4 interesting snowmen… one for each of our Middles (our own grown children and their spouses).
We placed our Middles’ gifts in the boxes. If someone had more than three gifts, we simply doubled up. We nestled the gifts in tissue paper, and taped the boxes shut.
After all the boxes were wrapped (we did end up ordering an additional roll of white paper as we ran out of paper), we used packing tape to tape them together.
Then it was my turn to get busy!
I headed to our local dollar store and looked for items to make each snowman unique… Hats, scarves, bows, glasses, dog scarves (for the dog owner) and so on! Then I went to work! I have a Cricut so I used that to cut out each person’s name, but writing it with a marker would work just as well.
Aren’t they cute?
We set our snowman gift towers up in our living room on December 23
and we loved the reactions
as our Middles walked into our home on Christmas Eve!.
When it was time to open gifts,
our Middles played a quick game to determine the order of opening!
(And… that’s a post for another day!)
The first person chose which layer of their Gift Tower that they wanted to open first. Then it passed to the next person. There was MUCH discussion as to whether the biggest box was actually the biggest/”big deal” present or not… Hmmm! Time would tell!
Meanwhile…
We did not wrap our infant and 2-year-old Littles’ gifts this way. I had decided that my 2-year-old Little, Little D, was more interested in brightly colored packages and would not understand the whole snowman concept anyway!
Cleanup was a breeze!
When we were done unwrapping presents,
we asked everyone to place all the trash/recyclables in their boxes!
So easy!
Our Middles also enjoyed wearing their silly accessories from their snowmen during the evening!
Son D’s snowman even had its own “man bag”!
I have to admit, it was a little hard to watch those cute snowmen and all our hard work
get ripped apart and destroyed!
Yet the fun and laughter that took place made it all worthwhile!
Our Middles enjoyed it,
and my husband and I are up for doing it again this year!
We have been saving boxes since early fall,
and have been thinking about other options.
Maybe reindeer this time??
Stay tuned!
It's easy to see how Gift Towers could become
a family tradition at Christmas time!
In fact, Laura is already thinking about what kind of towers she could build!
THANK YOU, LAURIE!
As you well know, we love sharing ideas and learning from each other!
So, if YOU have a great idea for wrapping gifts for your family and friends,
please share!
Feel free to comment at the bottom of this post
or email us directly at ourgrandlives@gmail.com
THANKS!
We’d love to have you visit our social media sites and/or follow us there!
We regularly share new and creative content on each platform!
Tomorrow is Friday, so we’ll be back with a few of our Friday Faves,
including our updated Stocking Stuffer Ideas for the Middles & Littles in your life
as well as a few of our own favorite gift ideas, specifically geared toward young Littles!
Next week, we’ll return with more holiday fun… ‘tis the season after all!
We plan to share new ideas for exploring Advent with young Littles,
we’ll revisit Laurie's 2024 Family Craft Day
and we’ll have more Christmas faves for you, too!
Did we happen to mention... we LOVE this time of year!
You won’t want to miss a thing!
As usual, we invite you to subscribe to our blog!
We’d love to have you join us!
💗 We are delighted to join the following link up parties and blog hops! 💗
MONTHLY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
What a cute idea! My oldest and her family will be back in the states in January and we will have some gifts for them at that time. They didn't want us sending much for Christmas as it all has to come back in their luggage, so we agreed we'd do something fun in January. I know my grands would love the snowmen. If I can get it together I'm going to try it!
What a cute idea! My oldest and her family will be back in the states in January and we will have some gifts for them at that time. They didn't want us sending much for Christmas as it all has to come back in their luggage, so we agreed we'd do something fun in January. I know my grands would love the snowmen. If I can get it together I'm going to try it!
Oh my goodness, this idea is super cute! I just love it so much. Thank you for sharing with us at the Crazy Little Lovebirds Link Party #66.
These are adorable, what a cute idea!!
Jenna, the Painted Apron
This is such a fun idea!