jennanddave.com

Did anyone else haul themselves out of bed early this morning to see the lunar eclipse? It was beautiful. I tried to take a picture, but I'm fairly inept with my camera and couldn't even get the moon to register on the screen, so I put it away and just enjoyed the moment. Then I went inside to get Dave. It took me more than an hour to get back to sleep, but it was worth it.

We got my parents two presents that are difficult to wrap. It happens every year, there's always the awkwardly shaped gift that results in bunched up paper, lots of tape, and oodles of bows to (mostly unsuccessfully) disguise the whole mess. My original plan was to send them ahead of us via UPS with a bunch of other presents, but there wasn't any room in the box once everything else was in there, so they're going to have to brave the seven hour trip to their house in our trunk. They're not showing it, but the presents are very afraid. Meanwhile I've been trying to decide if I should bring them unwrapped and sneak them into the house to wrap while I'm there, or risk their paper being shredded by the journey in the car.

Enter a Very Good Idea. Last week on soulemama, one of her posts was about how her family had, a few years ago, eschewed wrapping paper in favor of fabric. Brilliant! It's eco-friendly, produces much less Christmas-day trash, they can be used over and over again, and they handle awkwardly-shaped presents with great aplomb! On Friday Holly and I went out in search of fabric, and yesterday, after Henry came home from school, we set about making two gift bags for his Grammy and Grandpa's presents. (Henry works the sewing machine pedal like a champ!) They were so easy and satisfying to make, we made two more. The end result:

Aren't they cute? We tied them off with yarn. They look like loot bags to me, or money bags from cartoons; they should have big dollar signs appliqued on them. I'm thinking I might have to head out after Christmas to see what kind of deals I can score on holiday fabric to make more for next year.