wrapping woes

I have a love/hate relationship with gift-wrapping. I generally like it, because it's fun to see all of my gifts in one place, I'm excited to give them, and I like being organized and turning a big pile of stuff into neatly-wrapped, festive stacks. I love sneaking away to get into the holiday mood by listening to Christmas songs while wrapping. (Any opportunity I get to slip away and sit alone, peaceful and quiet, is always a treat...even if there's 'work' to be done.)

However. There are a lot of things I don't like about wrapping. In the spirit of...being negative, I've compiled a list that illustrates the ways gift-wrapping can suck. In no particular order:

-Cats. Before I had kids, I used to lock myself into hiding, away from the cats. When they are in the wrapping room, they walk on the paper, they flop on the paper, they wrinkle the paper. They attack the scissors while I'm cutting. Their hair gets on the tape. They are a nuisance, and any sneaking I do to get away is mostly to hide from them.

-Children. Now that I have kids, it's pretty much the same story--walk, flop, wrinkle. Steal scissors and walk around, chopping at the air. Pull the tape strands I pre-cut and hang on the end table. ENOUGH! Wrapping is definitely a naptime-or-bedtime activity.

-Speaking of tape, IT IS ALWAYS GONE. If I can even find a roll, it runs out in 1.5 wrappings. There is proof upstairs in my closet at this very moment--I tried to wrap the boys' Christmas Eve pajamas and only managed to get Cameron's halfway done. So.annoying. And it makes it harder to hide, a flap of paper sticking out, asking to be wrinkled or torn. I think rolls of tape should have a warning oh, say a foot from the end. How hard would it be to print a small line to symbolize the approach of end, or even write out "NEARING END OF ROLL"? I wouldn't mind sticking that piece on a gift...who looks that closely at the tape?

-Cheap paper.* I always seem to buy cheap paper. It tears when my cat walks across it, or when I fold the corners up less-than-carefully. It's thin and see-through...there's nothing like wrapping a book or movie, and having the title be clearly readable through the paper. What the heck is the point in wrapping it?! Am I supposed to first put it into a cardboard box and then wrap it? Or use twice as much paper? Lame. And wasteful! Of my money AND trees.

-Odd-shaped packages. This is the WORST part about wrapping. I hate, hate, hate wrapping non-square packages. Things with rounded edges are the worst. AAHHH. Makes my heart rate pick up just thinking about it. A puzzle, a book, a CD, a box of blocks...I can wrap anything with regular, straight lines. It seems like so many kid toys come in funky packages and ARGH. They just wind up looking so sloppy and the paper is all bunched up and folded over and I always cut too little or too much.... I realize it probably shouldn't bother me this much, but it does.

-Lack of fancy. I like when packages are neatly wrapped and adorned with ribbons, bows, or cute little personalized scrapbook-y tags with fancy lettering. However, I am also cheap and don't want to spend a lot on said adornments. I don't know how to tie fancy bows anyway, and I don't like to write on cute little tags with my chicken-scratch handwriting. I usually just write right on the package with a Sharpie--To: Cameron; From: Santa. I usually try to color-coordinate marker- and paper-colors, but this year I can only find the navy and orange markers from my big 12-pack, and the wrapping papers are mostly green and red, so. Needless to say, they won't be impressively snazzy this year.

*Speaking of paper--I had big ideas to make my own cute wrapping paper this year, preferably something more environmentally-friendly than the glossy, thin, non-recyclable stuff you buy in stores. I wanted to use plain white or brown paper and decorate it with sponged-on dots or embossed glitter snowflakes or something. I thought we'd run out of paper last year, so it was perfect timing...but then I found two partially-used rolls when cleaning the house this week, and we ARE really busy lately, trying to declutter the house in preparation to move...so, I've just been using those rolls. I probably won't have enough for all of the gifts I have to wrap, so maybe I will end up making some myself, but if not I guess there's always next year.