Day 11- Are you any good at wrapping presents? Describe a gift wrapped by you.

[strange_complex]

Firstly, many thanks to the people who commented on my last entry in the 25 days meme to suggest effective charities working to increase access to education in the developing world. I haven't had a chance to reply to your individual comments yet, as I went to bed soon after making the post and have been either working or worrying about sofas all day today! But your suggestions have all been really helpful. It's probable that I will go with one of the_alchemist's suggestions of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative or Deworm the World, for their combination of proven effectiveness and joined-up thinking about people's needs, but I haven't looked through the other ideas properly yet, and want to give them all a fair hearing before I decide for sure.

Meanwhile, today's entry is going up a little early, as I am going out this evening. But I'm not sure I have a massive amount to say about it anyway! Obviously I try to make gifts look reasonably enticing and attractive. I usually choose purple shiny wrapping paper if possible, though at Christmas I may go for something a bit more seasonal-looking instead. E.g. this Christmas I'll be using one roll of black paper with a pattern of white wintry trees on it, and another silver-grey one along much the same lines. I wrap the gift itself as carefully as I can, though my habit of giving a selection of chocolatey treats and candles to each member of my family each year makes this difficult. Those things are too small (in value and often size) to be wrapped individually, but they are also of different sizes and shapes, so they make for awkward bundles to wrap. I'm pretty rubbish at remembering to buy gift-tags, so my gifts often have the names written on the paper instead - but hopefully now that I've written about that here I will remember this year!

And I think that's pretty much all I have to say on this fascinating topic.

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Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

One of the things I remember my grandmother fondly for was the care and attention she put in to wrapping gifts.

MLW also is very good at gift wrapping.

I am less good. Although I fondly remembe wrapping presents for my daughter for her first Christmas when I wasn’t living in the same town as her. I bought her lots of little things and wrapped them all in bright, almost neon tissue paper of yellow and pink. Each of the packages was decorated with yellow and pink ribbons and gift tags with little jokes in them. All of the gifts went into a large pink and yellow neon bag and thence into a box for transport.

Mention of gift wrapping reminded of a Mr Bean moment (like you I don’t find the character particularly funny and this isn’t really Mr Bean, just somewhat Beanific.) The scene in Love Actually, where Alan Rickman’s character is trying to buy his secretary (and I’ve never been sure if the ended up as lovers or whether he was just in a dizzy spiral of confused lust about what was on offer) the expensive gift whilst his wife wanders around nearby and Rowan Atkinson’s shop clerk is taking ages to deliver his performance art / expressive dance gift wrapping service.

Well that scene makes me laugh.