What a great idea for gift wrapping, Susie! I love all your totems and your dining room too. Isn't it fun to be able to say where you got everything from and how much it cost? You appear to have a houseful of wonderful 2nd hand treasures. Thanks for sharing, Hose! he-he Calamity_j, your totems are very unusual. I like that little "king mouse!" And what in the dickens were the pieces from in the other totem? I'm dying to find out!

Enjoyed looking at your cute puppies!! The beads are beautiful, hope you didn't have to redo them. Desk set looks very nice,usually nothing matches up. My DS had the soup can with glued on yarn around it & tuna can with yarn also, think that was for pins & paperclips. Glad your team was the winner!! They needed that after all these years!!Jan

excel spreadsheets? lists? rooms dedicated to wrapping? Sheesh that's far too organized for me. I thought just getting the ornaments organized by tree was a HUGE undertaking! For wrapping I use the desperately rushed, christmas is in 4 hours, need a bottle of wine approach. I spread out the entire mess of crap with a hole in the middle for me and the wine, and begin digging my way out carefully :p I actually am organized when it comes to the decorations though. I have one attic for trees, one for ornaments that go on the trees that are on the 3rd and 4th floor as well as the decoration, and then I store the decorations and ornaments for the first floor and second floor are kept on the second floor. Less hauling down (and up) stairs that way :) I also label the boxes for the appropriate tree which is helpful when distributing boxes around the house. WHile I can obviously see what's vintage and what's traditional as well as all the other themes of a tree through the plastic boxes, I don't know how many vintage go to each tree unless I put them in separate boxes. THat leaves me just enough ornaments for each tree without taxing my little brain. I wish I could apply that kind of organization to presents LOL I do actually wrap all but the Santa ones in advance (so that's the 23rd verses the 24th btw) and those can go out under the main tree. I have been known to buy the same thing more than once...perhaps that list idea is a good one LOL Gad a room dedicated to wrapping and holiday storage...well I'm a bit nutso over christmas (major santa barf is in EVERY room) so that would have to be a big big big room! But it's a lovely fantasy!

I learned I have to be careful in how I present gift cards. Once I was giving two kids gift cards attached to wrapped candy bars. I gave one to the first child and was with her as she opened it and found the GC. Her sister was asleep, so I asked her to give the other candy bar + gift card to her sister later.... I found out the sister had not noticed the GC and threw it in the trash with the wrapper. Luckily, it was still there when I told her to go look for the GC with the wrapping paper. So however clever you make the presentation, make it obvious that there is a card, too.