Update on My Life This Week

Hi Friends,
I am pre-occupied this week. My father-in-law is on end-of-life care at the hospital right now. He is 97 years young and has lived his life to the fullest right up until this past October, when he had a bad fall. He lived in a nursing home near my family for a couple of months, providing so many opportunities for us to enjoy time together. He has read my blog from its inception and even linked to it from his own blog. His name is Dr. Robert H. Mounce, and he is primarily known as a New Testament scholar, although his career was expansive. My family has been blessed to know him and learn from his example.

I do have other things that I want to "talk" about with you all, but just don't have the time to type it all out right now. I'll be back very soon, though.
Take care,
Lili

Classy, Free Gift Wrap for a Small Gift

So this is not quite free, but very close. My cost was the printer ink and copy paper. I have figured this cost to be about 4 cents per page.  I didn't need a lot of gift wrap, just enough for one small package and one slightly larger package. I ended up using 4 sheets of printed paper, for about 16 cents for both gifts.

Those gifts that I bought at clearance and semi-annual sales now need wrapping. The above gift is part of a birthday package for someone who is special to me. Wanting a chic and classy look for this birthday gift, I decided on a black and white color scheme. (By the way, this is very inexpensive to do with home office supplies.)

Using free clip art, I made this pattern on my laptop for printing onto a sheet of paper. In my experience, Apple Pages seems to work better for cut and paste of images than MS Word, so it's what I have used here and with other printed images.

The small gift used 3/4 of a sheet, while the larger package used 3 sheets, with strategic piecing to minimize visible seams. The most obvious seam runs across the center of the package and shall be concealed with ribbon.

I did invest some time making the pattern, but I considered this fun, down time. In addition, I now have this pattern stored on my laptop for future use.

For a price comparison -- I could have bought some gift wrap. Even at the Dollar Store I would have spent $1 for wrap, and likely would have used about 1/3 of one of their small rolls, or 35-cents' worth. Printing gift wrap at home was about half of the price of the least expensive option for me, meant that I could skip a trip to the store, and was an outlet for my creative energy.  A win all around! And I don't have any leftovers lingering in a closet, as I printed only what I needed.