I love getting presents. You’re shocked, i know 😉

But I do – I love it. Big or small, homemade or luxury. I just really like it! Especially the ones I know thought was put into choosing especially for me. Some of my all time fav gifts have been very inexpensive! ohhhhh…. never mind that Marcus Engel… go on about your business now… Shucks. Well – I think he’s figured that out by now anyway!

Something I love even more than receiving gifts is the giving of gifts… Or at least just as much!… most of the time anyway… *sigh*

And I go totally nuts for beautiful packages, you know the ones, so insanely perfect they cause the heart to shudder in anticipation! Too precious to touch – yet I muster up the courage to bravely rip that paper open to see what treasure awaits inside!

Every year I make a goal to have each gift I give, packaged to perfection.

I dream of giving gifts that look like this:

Beautiful, simple, organized, elegant, original

Creative, fun, upcycled

Or maybe one’s like this: Fun, cheerful and unique.

Come on – doesn’t it just make you HAPPY! 😉

But – I usually fall rather short of my goal.
My “proudest” packaging this year was this, completed 3 weeks before Christmas.

Shiny and glittery and has an extra bow/gift 🙂 This makes me smile and wish I’d taken a more properly staged photo of it!

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By far my most shameful gift-wrapping disaster this year was this – and yes that is a cardboard box, tucked inside a larger cardboard box (that will not close mind you) and in a creative disaster I decide taking a giant wad of packaging paper and tying it into a “Bow” that will encompass the gap left from the box not fitting would fix it… #fail.

And of course this was wrapped around 3 AM christmas eve, just a few hours before the “deadline.”

Oh and then we had this little beauty. (Not talking about Maddison here – she is a truly gorgeous girl inside and out!) But the ummm half wrapped toy she’s holding that even a two year old realized was Mickey Mouse with out laying hands on it.

Guess we were low on paper and out of boxes/bags by this point!

See the little (big?) yellow feet of Mickey sticking out the bottom?? Hmmm….

So – bottom line – you never know what type of package gifts will arrive in. And despite my resolve, year after year, to get this “right” … I’m not even close.

But I will tell you something I most certainly have learned over the years… The most precious gifts we give, and receive, often come in unlikely looking packages. With rough edges. With exposed scars. With bows that tilt entirely to much to the side.

And we will be wise, and blessed, to look beyond the packaging of those around us, confident that inside there is something of value, of beauty.
A gift we need, a lesson we should embrace.
Something often, one of a kind that will make our life so much richer because we dug thru the unfinished and,
at times, ugly, to discover the truly sacred.

Bottom line: Guess the old adage is true – don’t judge a book by it’s cover or a gift by its packaging. Unless it’s a blue box that says “Tiffany’s” I mean come on… I’m not pretending to be a saint here!  🙂

Wishing you a new year filled with love, learning, joy, laughter and all kinds of discovery’s of the most valuable, precious kind!