Christmas Wrapping 2011

Family, friends and longtime readers of the blog know that I have a sort of anal retentiveness when it comes to the holidays. It starts with a Google Doc where I store all my gift ideas year-round and trickles down to my obsessive insistence on picking a wrapping paper color scheme each year.

It sounds neurotic (it is), but I find joy in the creativity of it, so it's not as crazy as it sounds...at least I don't think it is.

The basic rules of my Christmas wrapping are these: no wrapping paper obviously made for Christmas (because that way, I can use it year-round) and I have to attempt different riffs on the theme as much as possible.

This year, I decided to challenge myself to use typical Christmas colors: silver and gold, but together. It's like a jewelry store under my tree! I got the awesome textured paper (seen above) at TJ Maxx and most of the other papers came from Target. The gold kraft paper is left over from last year, but I saw some rolls at Target this year, too.

Let's take a journey down memory lane:

Christmas 2006: Hot pink, black and white and silver. Still one of my all-time faves, but REALLY girly.

Christmas 2007: Gold, pink and kraft paper. This year was just okay.

Christmas 2008: Red, white and robin's egg blue...my future wedding colors! I loved this color scheme, and even used baker's twine and made my own tags. BUT I still have some of that paper left over.

 Christmas 2009: In an effort to get rid of some of the red, I reused it and paired it with purple. It was just OK.

Christmas 2010: Blue and gold. I loved this one. I think it was my chicest yet, including this year. 

Someday I might try to take on unconventional green and red, but I've also considered greens and silvers, or mint and gold. Any suggestions out there? Am I only in this neurotic exercise?