Recycling for Christmas

Maybe at last I am taking things to the extreme, but I have determined to wrap our Christmas presents in recycled materials. My 6 year old thought it was cool until she realized that recycled wrap is not shiny and covered in Santa Claus. It's just shiny.

Anyways, hoarded a stack of old magazines expressly for this purpose. The fun part was making the bows.
First, I cut skinny strips of magazine paper and folded them into a figure 8 pattern and stapled them in the middle. Then I crossed 3 or 4 of of the figure 8s, stapled again, and then made a loop and stapled to the top.

I loved the way they turned out. So I wrapped packages in magazines and topped with the bows. I used colored sharpies to write directly on the package in lieu of gift tags.
Although my daughter hates it, I think the gifts look even more colorful than normal, it recycled magazines I otherwise may not have had a use for, and it cost me nothing!


I love it when being green helps me save money! :-)