Show hospitality by making your home an oasis of calm and productivity during the crazy Christmas season. Host a wrapping party! You have to wrap your gifts anyway, you might as well wrap with friends! We hosted a mini-wrapping party the other day and wanted to give you a few tips for hosting a party and wrapping yourself.
Hospitality Hints for the Wrapping Party:
- Keep things low-key. Tell your friends to come as they are and don’t worry about making your house perfect. Just make sure there are a couple of fairly-clean surfaces for wrapping. You could even host at night after the kids go to bed and have everyone wear their PJs!
- Ask everyone to bring two rolls of wrapping paper, scissors, tape, and embellishments (more on this below). Don’t forget the name tags!
- Consider having a coffee/cocoa bar. Set out the coffee and various creamers, marshmallows, and sweeteners, and let everyone help themselves.
- Prepare some easy snacks for people to munch on while they wrap. Be sure to leave out anything with powdered sugar or cheese dust so no one gets fingerprints on their gifts.
- Have a Christmas movie playing in the background or Christmas music and a fireplace on TV (Netflix has a channel called Fireplace for Your Home perfect for a party backdrop).
Hints for the Gift Wrapping:
- Gift wrapping ideas are one of the reasons a party is so fun—everyone will be able to help choose bows and decide which paper goes best with each name tag. Plus, you’ll have a variety of items to share and pick from!
- We went to Pinterest, y’all. We googled and pinned and found lots of ideas like these. Look up a few fun ideas before your guests arrive to get the creative juices flowing.
- Encourage guests to bring gift bags, too. No judgment here if your presents are wrapped simply! The idea is to have fun and enjoy one another’s company more than anything.
- We discovered name tags can be made out of almost anything: wooden discs, paint swatches, the wrapping paper itself. You can also find lots of free printable name tags online to have at the ready.
- Gift box embellishments are only limited by your creativity, too. Try candy canes, ribbon of all kinds, baker’s twine, ornaments, greenery from your yard or Christmas tree, washi tape, stamps, and whatever craft supplies you have on hand. We recommend invading your local everything’s-a-dollar store for various types of ribbon and decorations.
To wrap up (pun fully intended), help everyone gather their leftover supplies and load all their gifts into their cars (encourage guests to bring boxes or bags to haul their gifts home). Then you can sit and enjoy a tree surrounded by beautiful gifts!