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The holiday issue is our gift guide, and this year you might say we have gone a little overboard. It’s my fault, I’ll admit it! I love the fun of scouring the stores and finding inspiration online, hunting for that perfect gift and evidently our team does too. But then, of course, those gifts need wrapping…not so much fun, or is it?
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, two juxtaposed decades from a style perspective. My mom was the ultimate 70s mom, which means she was a cool mom before being a cool mom was even a thing! She was a DIYer before anyone even talked about DIY. So when it came to gift wrapping, that woman had it all tied up in the cleverest of ways. She didn’t have a designated wrapping area, or a cupboard or drawer full of tools—what she had was ingenuity along with a little help from my dad.
My father’s go-to wrapping paper was the ‘Sunday Funnies’. I can remember the very first time we wrapped a birthday gift from the comic section of the newspaper—I was somewhat horrified because I knew it was because no one thought to buy gift wrap—but when I arrived at the party with my Funnies-wrapped present, everyone oohed and aahed at how clever it was!
Naturally, it became a staple in our house, along with cut-up shopping bags and my mother’s favourite wrapping material – tea towels! To this day I have an abundance of tea towels because she still wraps gifts in only the finest of dishtowels. Holiday wrapping also included kitchen twine for ribbon and boughs from trees for bows. I swear Pinterest took inspiration from my very own mother!
Fast forward to the 80s and a family Christmas spent in London’s Knightsbridge area, and my mother’s DIY efforts were cast aside by my intrigue with papery shops filled with luxuriously-wrapped gifts and a plethora of embellishment options. I was obsessed with the idea of creating wrapped gifts to coordinate with décor, and continue to be wowed by the beauty of packaging. Being a millennial mom, I recently replaced an unused homework nook with a wrapping station!
No matter what your style, we hope you feel inspired and ready to celebrate the season in your own cool way after reading our holiday issue.
That’s a wrap,
Merry
Mary Taggart
