paint it black

here is a picture of my gifts under my family's christmas tree.

for about thirty years i have been wrapping gifts in black paper. the original reason is TOTALLY normal (as normal as it gets over here).

that first year a long time ago i was out shopping and i found some rolls of DARLIN' little gift ribbons and cute little bows that were black with gold lettering that said YET ANOTHER FABULOUS PRESENT and since my uncle had been calling presents fabulous for years, it was sort of a no-brainer. and the ribbons looked REALLY fetching on black paper, so that was that.

they were a hit. a joke and then a tradition were born.

black presents do not mean gloomy presents, though. most years i take the black wrappings and then paint over them. snowflakes, stars, the aurora borealis. one year i pained a little winter scene with a snug little cabin in snowy woods.

ON EVERY GIFT I WRAPPED THAT YEAR. can i tell you how much work that was for wrapping paper?

if i run out of black wrapping paper or if i just don't have any (because some years the style demands it) i wrap gifts in brown grocery bags and spraypaint them black. sometimes i paint the whole thing black, and sometimes i do cute things with masking tape.

either way, it's black spraypaint. this year i was too busy making a penguin box and fortune cookies and hand wrapping precious little cream caramels to paint on the packages, but as long as my gifts are
black, everybody's happy.