Monday, December 26, 2011

The gifts that I gave this year

... weren't my usual fabulousness, but that's because it's Christmas! I'm a better gift giver for birthdays, weddings and housewarmings because those are personal occasions but Christmas is just, well, it's a LOT of gifts to buy! So Vince and I give tokens instead, little somethings, ya know, a "Hey, we thought of you!" thing. Here are some of the stuff we gave to family and friends:
hardbound books from Fully Booked and candy from Candy Corner
science kits from Toy Kingdom and beauty/grooming sets from Bench
And the gifts I always give on Christmas: Body Shop Christmas collections!
Just cute little things, right? Now that I'm a mommy, I find that I just can't spend too much time away from my son. So we brought him along to the shops, which wasn't a good idea since Vito's a little devil, sweeping things off shelves and begging and whining for all the brightly colored things that fascinate a little boy. And since I'm pregnant, I'm not fast enough to stop him! So we did all our shopping from three shops. And that already felt like too many shops!

Anyway, this year, I didn't do any gift wrapping. With no household help, I just didn't have the time. So I figured I'd just put them all in brown bags and give them like so. After all, aren't brown paper packages tied up with string a few of our favorite things?
I think I'll do this again next year. It's simple and cheap!

I used to be a fantastic giftwrapper kinda girl--I'd do artsy folds, tie ribbons, add mistletoe and glitter. The works! Last year, I had the utterly insane idea of recycling magazine pages. Yes, it's a good green idea but I just had to take it up a notch and customize. For example, if the gift was a toy car, I looked for ads of cars and used those. If the gift was nail polish, I used nail polish ads, beauty product-beauty pages, book-book review section, food-recipe section, etc. I did not realize how hard it was to actually look for the perfect pages to match the gift! I am never doing that again!

I'll talk more about the holidays soon. This was a lovely season for my little family--even after we had a big scare right before Christmas Eve--and I want to tell you all about it. My Facebook page followers have a bit of an idea; I'll talk more about it here this week. Plus, I want to share my blessings! I've been preparing a blog giveaway but haven't gotten around to doing it because, well, you all know my reason: I have no household help! So stay tuned, folks!

From our home to yours, we wish you all the love, joy, peace and prosperity in the world!

9 comments:

  1. Glad everything is okay with Wiggle! Pwede na mag-relax (sort of!) tapos na Christmas rush!

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  2. Happy Holidays to you, Vince, Vito and Wiggle! Hope to see you soon! I agree with you, I did not buy any gift wrappers this year but used some bags that was rejected by a supplier (from a friend) and I'm giving out McCormick packages! LOL :) It's the thought that counts and it helps save the environment as well!

    Take care sweet girl! Miss you! Happy New Year too!

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  3. I wanted to use brown paper this year too, but couldn't find any. Where'd you get those cute little ribbons? They're adorable! :)

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  4. KV, there's a ton of brown paper bags at Pioneer Center. Then I got the ribbons months ago at some ribbon shop in SM Makati.

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  5. Merry Christmas to you ms. Frances, to your hubby and to Vito. Happy that you're fine...Will definitely try those brown bags... :))

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  6. Your Christmas gift aren't bad! They're still very nice, actually. I also gave "Body Shop" stuff to my girls. I love BodyShop and I have a membership card so it's nice to shop there. Hehe.

    Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Frances!

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  7. This Christmas I used old newspapers stained with japanese paper to wrap my gifts. I've also been using a shot I took of the Star City Christmas lights using my lomo cam as a gift card for two straight years. It's fun to DIY gift wrapping, kung hindi lang talaga time constraining! Pero it's priceless when the recepients appreciate the effort :)

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  8. delighted to see the pictures of brown paper bags used for christmas gift packaging. i did that too! i used sinamay ribbons to decorate. merry christmas! =)

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  9. Oh hey the science kits are a great idea! Might get those for future presents. :) I think the brown paper packaging with little accents is cute.

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