NO GIFT WRAP CHALLENGE - Lookee What I Made

I got crafty with some more pretty paper and stickers. These are actually tins that came with something else in them. A friend saved them and passed them on to me. Took me about a half an hour to do all three of them. Inside each tin was a gift card.

You can do this same thing with CD or DVD jewel cases. Just glue some old wrapping paper to the outside and slip your gift card on the inside. Hopefully, whoever you give it to will save it to pass on to someone else.

NO GIFT WRAP CHALLENGE - Drop what you are doing..

Seriously, drop what you are doing right now and run to the Salvation Army's Angel Tree at Fayette Mall. That's the booth where you pick the name of a child and their wish list and you provide holiday gifts for needy kids.

I was there this morning picking out names for our family to buy for and there were HUNDREDS of children's wish lists still waiting for sponsor. One of the volunteers working there told me they had more names this year because of the worsening economy. (Psssst - found loads of clothes at Penneys 50% off which made buying an outfit for these kids pretty easy)

The booth is in the newer part of Fayette Mall, near Dillards and they are open during mall hours. You need to pick out your kids and return the gifts to the booth by Dec. 14.

I also recently had an e-mail from the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program saying that they were in need of folks to "adopt" families who need help with buying gifts this Christmas. If you can help e-mail marjorie.stanek@bdvp.org.

Now - after that public service announcement we return you to your regularly schedule CHALLENGE!

My first big gift wrap challenge came today as I "wrapped" all the gifts for our Christmas exchange with my sister's family on Saturday. I think I came up with some cute ideas!

The picture above is some old boxes that came with jewelry (yes, I'm a packrat, I save cute boxes). These were the perfect size for the jewelry I'm giving to my niece-in-law (is that a word?) and my great-niece.

The boxes were a little plain so I stuck a big white letter sticker on each box with the lady's first initial and added some little dots of liquid glitter. You could use stick-on bling, or even make dots with a pen or a sharpie. The little holly leaves were leftovers from an old sheet of Christmas stickers.

Now I have re-used an old box, used up some old stickers and didn't use a scrap of wrapping paper. This is an easy craft you could turn your kids loose on to.

I did some other cute packaging today too, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see them.

Happy Not-Wrapping!

NO GIFT WRAP CHALLENGE - Use what is given to you!

Another great way keep from using gift wrap is to use what the stores give you! If a store offers you a free gift box, TAKE IT! Chances are its a very nice looking box. Talbots has beautiful sturdy red boxes with their logo embosses instead of printed, so its very easy to hide the name with a bow. JC Penney also has pretty red boxes, although they do have their name printed on it, you can cover it with a gift tag if you are clever.
I picked up a gift today for our long-time babysitter, who is retiring from our every-other-Wednesday Date Night gig, now that my oldest is a teen. I bought a box of chocolates to go with the gift card I got her and the store clerk at Godiva put it in a very beautiful off-white bag. No need to wrap this up, I just stuffed the bag with some pretty tissue paper I saved from last Christmas and it looks very pretty. Those pretty gold boxes they use are great to reuse too.
Starbucks packages their coffee and other gifts in really nice reusable gift boxes. If any of you are luck enough to get one this year, SAVE THAT BOX. These things are made to be reused so the Starbucks label is only on the tag.
I've got a challenge coming up. I'm exchanging gift with my sister this weekend and the gift I got her is in a fairly large box (think slightly bigger than a toaster). Its a kitchen item, so I'm trying to come up with a clever way to package it that goes along with the kitchen theme. Its too big to wrap in a pretty dishtowel, so I can't use that idea. Ideas, anyone?

It's the Lexington Family NO GIFT WRAP Challenge

I read somewhere (oh wait, that was in Lexington Family, wasn't it?) recently that we dump something like 4 million TONS of wrapping paper in our landfills during the holidays. Unbelievable! These scraps of paper are going to be hanging around for years!
And we Americans use 38,000 MILES of ribbon each year, also unrecyclable.
So I am presenting to our readers a NO GIFT WRAP Challenge. See if you can get through the holidays without using a single inch of gift wrap. That is my goal for this holiday season and I'm going to try and post a new gift wrap alternative every day for the next two weeks. Follow along here for some great new ideas and PLEASE share your own ideas.
Here's a little motivation for you. Post a comment or suggestion to one of my NO GIFT WRAP Challenge posts in the next two weeks and you will be entered to win a Holiday Prize Package (unwrapped). It includes the book "A Green Christmas" written by Sheherazade Goldsmith.
Isn't that a great name? So cool to be named after an Arabian Princess who kept herself from being beheaded by entertaining her king with a new tale every night for One Thousand and One Nights. Sure hope she doesn't got by something as mundane and Sherry. Surely not.
So my first idea for NO GIFT WRAP is actually something my daughter and I came up with last year. We wrapped up several gifts in little metal lunch boxes that we repurposed. This example actually came from a scrapbook company and had cardboard letters in it, but I've seen little lunch boxes like this at the dollar store too. We glued on some pretty paper scraps and added a few stickers and this made a great container for a gift card, a scarf, jewelry, or any other small gift.
Now show me your cool ideas!

Kid Power Rules!

Here's another great toy I ran across while doing research for our Holiday Gift Guide (see our December issue hitting the streets Wed., Nov. 26). Its a line of trucks made by Sprig Toys that are totally kid powered!

Yes, I said, kid powered! NO BATTERIES!!! Your kids power the energy for the lights and sounds by driving the cars around. Now your kids actally get a reward for being active.

You can find Sprig Toys locally at Toys R Us.

The Space Shuttle Gets Even Cooler!

So I decided I needed to buy the Mega Rig Space Shuttle for my nephew, who is 7. I checked out the price at Amazon.com and was suprised to see an option for "Frustration-Free Packaging" for some of the Mattel toys, including this one.

Frustration-Free? Sounds right up my alley. How many hours have I spent bending those dang wires to free the Polly Pockets from their plastic bondage? How many nails have I broken trying to pick the ultra-sticky tape off the backs of Littlest Pet Shop creatures?

So I clicked on the Frustration-Free option and sure enough, when the Mega Rig Space Shuttle showed up at my door is was efficiently packed in a single brown cardboard box. No clamshell plastic containers, no wires, no rubberbands, not a strip of sticky tape in sight.

Now my nephew (sssshhhh, don't tell him) can play with his toy the minute he opens it and not 20 minutes later when Aunt Laurie finally gets all the wires off. And ALL of the packaging can go in the recylcing bin. And the dog won't get hold of any of those little plastic pieces that fall off when you remove the rubber bands. He'll be so disappointed. He lives for plastic. He thinks Polly Pocket shoes are bubble gum for dogs.

I snagged these photos off the Amazon site so you can see how much less packaging is used. On the left is the toy, the center is the traditional packaging, and the right shows you what I received.

Coolest idea ever! All toy companies should do this. Are you listening Polly Pocket?

Right now this is only featured on 19 of the top selling products. Send an e-mail to your favorite toy company this week demanding more packaging that is environmentally-friendly and Mommy-friendly.

Totally Cool Space Shuttle

More cool stuff is arriving every day in our office. Did I mention that some lucky readers will be winning all these cool Holiday Gift Guide products? More on that in December.

I love the line of toys that Mattel has come out with this fall. I'm not going to show you the one that made the Gift Guide but this Matchbox® Mega Rig® Shuttle Mission is a close second.
The best part of this building system is that it starts as one gigantic space ship and but then it breaks down to 30 different combinations of space vehicles for kids to create. Its got cool accessories, like a space arm to grab things, an ATV and a UFO with a space alien inside.

I wish I had a little boy! Do you suppose my 15-year-old daughter would get mad if I bought her this?

It retails for around $45 at most major retailers.