The christmas surprise ... my mom the eccentric gift wrapper

The ice breaker for an all-day meeting I had today was "tell us about a christmas tradition"...

So, what did I tell about? Being one of 10, you can only imagine the amount of time that my mom had to labor wrapping presents for 10 kids. Unreal. And, there were never presents under the tree or out until Christmas Day. So, every year the Christmas surprise was not what you got for Christmas, but more importantly how were all the gifts wrapped. Let me give you an example. One year my mom went all out - planting one gift in our stocking, and that wrapping was the "keystone" that matched to all your designated presents. Then, other years we encountered presents that were wrapped with a certain color bow...again, the sign. I personally liked the year when we were just handed a huge garbage bag with a note on it with our name. Perfect. Its just like santa dropped off all the presents and said "screw it" the bag will do...(hefty bags should note the task expansion I just gave them).

Anyway, I thought about all the crazy ways I have remembered my mom wrapping the gifts - and you have to raise a glass when you think that she probably had to wrap over 50-60 gifts the night before Christmas. Heavens forbid someone not get at least 4 or 5 gifts!

All I can think about is that my mom should transfer her knowledge to nonprofits that are always looking for tons of gift-wrappers. Watch my mom. She's the steven segal of christmas wrapping.


And, its actually my mom's birthday today. So I wrote a really awful song.

Happy birthday to you,
you live in a zoo, (the weber residence)
you look like a monkey
and you act like one too

For you creatives out there, like the mom, check out Design Sponge - an inspirational blog for the design shady in all of us. The post here is about how to decorate for a "modern christmas".