Farm Party Gift Wrap

A couple weekends ago my niece had a farm themed birthday party...and it was awesome!

Complete with petting zoo

Birthday girl and the pig

And this llama was a total badass!  He was like a celebrity on the red carpet.  I swear that as we all crowded around to take pictures he slowly turned toward each person to get their photo.....llama knows whats up!

And he was the best photo bomber ever

Anways.....getting the point of this post is the gift wrap.  I like to wrap gifts keeping with the theme of the celebration.  In fact, I have a whole section of my blog dedicated to this called "Creative Gift Wrapping"  (look on the left side of the main page)  You can see all my past gift wrapping there

Well of course this party was no different.  I decided to make the gift look like a barn.  It was really easy because all I needed was construction paper and a glue stick

And I did it in like 15 mins.....before I had to leave.  Procrastination at its finest people

Creative Wedding Gift Wrap

So my dream finally came true.....well....at least one dream

I FINALLY got to go to a damn wedding!  Not that I had never been to one before or anything cuz I have....let me explain

I have been married now for a year and a half and all I have been wanting since my wedding was to go to somebody-else's.  Not in a feed me, let me drink booze on your dime, give me cool party favors kind of way (although those are awesome wedding guest perks...no denying that!)  But more so in a way that I just wanted to sit back and watch another couples big day

You put SOOOO much time, effort, and money into your own that you come out with such an appreciation for the entire process....down to every little detail that you never would have noticed in your PB (pre-bride) days. 

Well....my sister Kinsey went to 7 weddings in the year after mine.  Yes.... SEVEN!!  Meanwhile I'm over here with a buncha invitations to NOTHING.  So needless to say when our friends got engaged last November I was pretty freakin excited

So combine the fact that I was practically peeing myself over attending this wedding already and my deep, deeeeeeep love for themes and bad ass gift wrap I had to come up with something cool.

I thought it would be funny to make the gift look like a wedding cake since people are always making wedding cakes look like stacked gifts.....see what I did there?

I think the sad part is that I then picked out their gift based off of what would lend itself best to a cake like size and shape.  So the gift wrap came before the actual gift....but hey....whatever works right?

We ended up getting them an enamel dutch oven that they registered for (it made a fabulous bottom tier)  And the top tier was a DIY Photo Coaster set I made.

I wanted the boxes to look like they had frosting piped on them.  So I used my hot glue gun to simulate frosting designs.  Here is the box for the top tier where I just did a simple dot pattern

I didn't take pictures of the bottom box, but I did the same technique making dots and scrolls

As I "piped" all around I had the box laying on its side...of course MoMo had to crawl in and make a house out of it.  (You can see the coasters I made)

The I spray painted both boxes white, glued on ribbon trim, stacked them in place, and glued on some fake flowers

We used bride and groom Pez dispensers as the toppers because our friend Morgan is a Pez collector and he went in on the gift with is.  It was his bright idea to add them on top...kudos to Morgie!

Came out pretty good......except......

I took these boxes from work and in  BIG, BLACK, lettering it said "Heavy walled elbow noodles"  No matter what I did....no matter how many coats of primer I used...I could NOT get that shit to cover

I cropped it out in the above photo.....but this is how it looked

Drove me effin crazy!  Luckily, the groom is a fellow food industry worker (me, groomy, and The Boy all met in culinary school) so he found it pretty amusing

I was one of the first ones there, but I kept my eye on the gift table and as soon as it started to fill up I swooped in and used one of the little boxes to cover it up

Problem solved!


It was a great night.  Two amazing people got hitched, there was good food and good company, and lots and lots laughs

I guess the wait was worth it =)

 

Monster High Gift Wrap

Keeping with our tradition of gift wrap matching the theme of the party....I knew exactly what I wanted to do for Brooke's Monster High gift

I saw that on the show their lockers at the school were shaped like coffins

I had made a coffin box once before for a Halloween party to hold breadsticks so the construction of one was familiar

Draw out the coffin shape for however big you want it and cut out 2 of them.  One will be the base and the other the lid

Starting with the two longest sides, measure them and cut out strips making sure they are tall enough to cover height of your gift.  Hot glue in place

Repeat with all the other sides

Then I painted the whole thing pink and The Boy made the skull lock 

It's fun to do.  In fact I think I'm going to make myself some more sturdy versions of this for Halloween this year to keep year after year.  I'm looking forward to it


Ooooh the crafting mind.  Already planning rojects for holidays that are 7 months away,  It's a sickness I tell you....a sickness!

Camping Themed Gift Wrap

If you look under my "Creative Gift Wrapping" label (left side of screen) you'll probably notice that cool gift wrap is our thang

Whether The Boy is making  me a Dharma Drop, or we make a Perry the Platypus box we like to keep things in line with the theme....and of course super cool

Since Elsa was having a Camping themed party we thought a camper gift box would be the way to go

I wish I could take credit for this one....but this is all The Boys' hard work.  I was too busy working on the S'mores Cake , so while I baked and decorated, he sat at the kitchen table and whipped this snazzy thing up

Before......

Just a plain old box I brought home from work

Then after some white paper, hot glue, carboard wheels, and some marker action.......................

Notice the purposely uneven blinds? We thought it gave realistic effect

Cute little tow hitch

 

 Sleeping bags strapped to the top

Spare tire, an Oklahoma license plate (the state she was born in) and some creepy eyes looking out the window

The pressure was on as she picked our gift to open first

 

But I think we passed

Lost Inspired Gift Wrap

I have never once received flowers from The Boy on Valentines Day and probably never will

Instead of getting them on the most popular day of the year he gets me "Happy New Year" flowers....or a "Just cuz it's Tuesday" bouquet.....and I like it that

Instead I'm lucky that I get something far more creative....like last year I got a "Whitneys Sampler" box.....get it?

Instead of Wittmans?

I know....he's kind of funny and stuff

And again like last year he gave me an assortment of small goodies...cuz that's what I like!  I'm not the type of girl who expects jewlery or Coach purses....nope

I like these little boxes of random stuff because they remind me of stockings....my most favorite part of Xmas EVER!

This years theme however was.......

LOST!

I know all the true Losties out there can appreciate this.  The show may have ended in 2010...but the show never dies in the heart of a true fan

He made all my gifts look like Dharma drops....

Do you like how he drew on it to look like the package was stamped?  I thought that was so clever!

Here was some of the contents...but there was more

To make it sound all  "Dharma-like" everything had to have a very generic name like "Blu-Ray Disc"  (it couldn't be Peter Pan) and "electrolyte beverage"  

And of course he couldn't leave out our beautiful daughter.  She may be a cat but she still gets Valentines presents from her daddy...so she got a little Dharma drop herself

Her feline version included Seafood flavored cat treats, cream cheese, and a string cheese snack

Momo was a very happy girl

And so was I =)

Gifts For The Peanut Butter Lover In Your Life

Earlier this week I posted that I made Reese's Cup Cookies for my brother in-laws birthday.

I have a thing lately where I try my best to make the wrapping for all my gifts a little special.

I didn't want to slap them on a plate with a piece of saran wrap or throw them in a tupperware that has the hardcore white spots that I can't quite figure out what it is  (is it melted plastic??...or water spots???...I can never tell!)

So I thought what better than to put them in a giant peanut butter jar.

So I got to making my own

I used a giant olive jar from work and covered the lid just like I did in this tutorial  HERE .

The above link will give you a detailed tutorial but I took a few pics for ya.

Word of advice though.  I was trying to do this project using things I had on hand.  I was feeling lazy that day and a trip to Michael's was just a bridge too far.  I didn't have any red scrapbook paper so I thought I would give wrapping paper a whirl.  Since wrapping paper is super thin and only has the color or print on one side it's much harder to work with.  When I picked it up my fingers stuck to the areas that weren't completely dry and took some of the red off with it.

No biggie though....after it dried I colored in the little spots with a marker.  But scrapbooking paper is just less of a hassle

Of course you need a cool label for your peanut butter jar.  We were more of a Skippy family growing up.  (Apparently my mom wasn't that choosey)  But I decided on Jif for the sheer fact that it seemed easier to draw.  I'm not much of an artist.

I am completely aware that the "creamy" looks like ass haha

When your done just glue or tape it to your jar and fill with your peanut butter treat!

In hind sight I should have made a double batch of cookies to fill this beast of a jar.....but I am TERRIBLE at that kind of stuff.   I have no concept whatsoever of what will fit into something

I dirty more containers putting the dinner leftovers away that it's just easier for The Boy to do it.  The first one is way too small....then way too big...then I find the right size but can't find a matching lid to save my life.   By then end of it I've dirtied 5 sets of tupperware.   Annoying.

Here it is

This is the Instagramed version he posted.




Better than a plate right?   I freakin hope so!

Creative Gift Wrapping

This entire post is the work of my husband.  But like most things in marriage, we share the credit.  For example, at Christmas time I buy all the family gifts and both our names go on it.  In this case he makes the gifts look awesome and I look awesome too.  It's really a win win situation.

When my niece Elsa had a Phineas and Ferb party a few weeks ago he decorated the gift box to look like Perry the Platypus

For Brooke's party a week later she had a Tangled theme so that naturally meant a Pascal box

I posted this back In February but here is the box he made me for Valentine's Day

It definitely takes more time, but it makes them so memorable