Gift Wrapping & keeping busy

So, have you all wrapped your Christmas gifts just yet?
I certainly haven't, we're still doing our final Christmas shopping this weekend after lots of busy weekends finishing the house in time for Christmas.

Anyway, I got thinking about what I'm planning to do this year for gift wrapping. There are so many nice ideas out there (not to mention the amount of talented people who share their ideas). The problem is choosing which one to do?
Well I thought you might like to see some of the inspiring ideas for gift wrapping your Christmas presents (that is if you are as behind as I am with my Christmas preparations and you haven't wrapped your gifts either). You can click on any of the pictures to take you to the website where I found these cute ideas.

I love this simple look of coloured brown paper with raffia.

Such a simple sweet look. A bit minimalist for my taste, but easy enough to do with a bit of coloured paper under the cut-out bit.

This is such a fab idea from the Martha Stewart website. These sweet/candy tins and boxes have been wrapped so that the wrapping doesn't need to be removed to access the sweets. Great idea!

How pretty is this!?This is on of my favourite ways to wrap a gift... I'm obsessed with tissue paper, and it's perfect to make pretty flowers with to top presents. But I might save this idea for birthday gifts.
These are also lovely. They have been done using tissue paper folded lots of time over coloured wrapping paper.

These are so fun. It's from the Chez Larson blog's flickr photostream. I really like the bright wrapping paper teamed with the shiny ribbons.
This gift is wrapped using all recycled materials, simple and pretty. You should be able to find an online tutorial on how to do the bow, I never remember, so I always have to look it up.
A very sweet idea to use buttons and string.

This is not strictly a 'gift wrapping' idea, but this has made me think that buying big brown paper bags would make brilliant gift wrapping bags if accessorised with some ribbon and a tag.

Seeing all the pretty brown paper wrapping ideas, I think I'm going to use brown paper, and add a pretty tag attached with two strips of shiny ribbon. I'll post pictures here once I'm done. I hope you enjoyed these ideas as much as I did.

Now for the keeping busy bit. I have been running around the house non-stop tonight (and yes, I realise it's a Friday evening). Do you sometimes feel like you are very busy, but you've not managed to do that much, well thank goodness tonight was the opposite and I managed to do quite allot. Since coming home from work I made a lovely Sweet Potato soup, took the dog for a walk, then made a pudding, cleaned the kitchen, re-organised two kitchen cupboards, hung up some washing, sweeped the floors and now I'm sitting down for a cup of tea and some blogging time... phew, keeping busy, but it feels good! The best bit is knowing that I don't have to fret about cleaning the kitchen tomorrow, nor do I have to worry about dinner tomorrow night (soup leftovers it is!), which means I can go Christmas shopping without worrying about what needs doing at home.

I hope you're having a lovely time this weekend, and that you manage to get all your Christmas shopping done in time.

x