So there’s less than a week ‘til Christmas and you might be ready,  sort of organised or not organised at all. Either way, some of these presents look sucky and you really can’t wrap gifts properly, or maybe you just want to make them look nicer. Not to fear! I have a few ideas of ways to wrap your gifts without super professional.

1. Attach a Gift to your gift! 

Go buy a pack of candycanes and attach them to your gift. They might distract from your…um…shitty wrapping. Or get some Christmassy flavoured tea bags (in separate paper sachets), put a string through and use them as gift tags!

Draw your own wrapping paper!

Buy a roll of plain paper- you might be able to get this in a kids section at a craft store (they also sell it at ikea)- or a piece of paper big enough to wrap your gift. Draw whatever you want on it, it doesn’t matter if you’re not artistically inclined; if it goes horribly wrong the recipient might get a good laugh at it.  It also shows personal effort and you can personalise it for that person. 

DECOUPAGE TIME 

Buy a gift box, or just use a regular cardboard box and stick pictures to it. Make a collage of things that remind you of the person. 

Brown Paper Gift Bags! 

Some grocery shops still give out brown paper bags- if yours does, hang on to them. Otherwise you can buy them really cheap. Buy a christmas stamp and ink and stamp the bags and use a nice ribbon to tie the handles together. My Mum did this last year and they looked really lovely!

Hope I helped! 

Everyone likes getting mail, well, maybe not those whose mail is mostly junk and bills and bad news, but yeah, good mail, everyone likes good mail. Today, dear readers I have come up with a couple of great ideas which involve sending or receiving mail. Some of these ideas might help for people who want to get a gift for someone who doesn’t live far away.

Glossybox  

My first suggestion is a monthly subscription service. For £10 (+postage) a month (savings with extended subscriptions)  Glossybox will send you a whole bunch of high-end beauty product samples from companies such as Lancôme, OPI and Vichy. My Mum received one of these a month or two ago. It came with  great concealer, perfume samples, fake eyelashes, face masks and mascara. The ladies box is sent out monthly. There IS a male version which is sent out quarterly and costs £15 (+postage). These boxes are great if you are looking for new beauty products and don’t know what works for your skin or just fancy a bit of luxury.

Graze 

Graze is a great little scheme. The basic idea is that you pay £3.79 and they deliver you a snack box. You get four snacks in a box of reasonable portion size. Most of these snacks would probably be considered healthy- nuts, pumpkin seeds, dried food etc.  

I got a free Graze box from a magazine last month. When you sign up for the site you can select different plans. One plan offers the whole range, the other offers a sort of diet option.  You can choose what sort of snacks you want, dietary options and ones that you’d really hate to receive.  Even if you can’t afford the box every week you can use it to get ideas to make your own snacks . You can also send your friends boxes too. They’re pretty generous with offers (3 boxes at a reduced price, free boxes for friends- that sort of thing) . 

Bowbox.me

This adorable site is great for giving a gift to a friend online. Bowbox isn’t a physical box unlike the other things I’m suggesting: Bowbox is a virtual box full of images, music, videos etc. that you can send to your friends. Your bow box opens in the order you put things in just like a real gift box. This is a sweet idea for friends’ birthdays if you don’t have much money and you can put lots of effort into them too. You can make these private so only the person receiving them can view them or you can just make a public box of things you like.

You can also exchange boxes with a stranger too!

Candy Exchange! 

I liked this idea for people with international friends. The idea is that you get a bunch of chocolate and sweets from the country you live in and send them to a friend and in return they send you a box back. You get to try out a whole bunch of new food that you’d never get to try otherwise. 

How to do this- 

1. Find a friend you want to swap with. Make sure they are reliable and if you live at home make sure someone knows you’ve given this person your address.
2. Set an upper and lower cash limit for how much you’re allowed to spend so someone isn’t getting a lot more than the other
3. Buy sweets relevant to your country that the other person might not be able to buy where they live (eg. UK- Cadbury’s chocolate, Scotland- Tablet, and no one in the UK sells candycorn guys.)
4. Make sure you send items which will make it to the other country without going out of date and are carefully wrapped and properly sealed in their original packaging. 
5. Be super careful about strange foods, you might want to give the foods you receive a google to make sure they are safe to eat.
6. Enjoy! 

You see these “before you die” lists all the time, but a lot of the time they are costly or require a whole lot of effort and “stepping out of your comfort zones”. No, today I bring you a list of things you should SEE (In Real Life, not through the computer screen) at least once, hopefully for less money, and less effort.

1. Fireworks

Yes, fireworks. Chances are, you’ve seen these already at New Year or Guy Fawkes Night or on the 4th of July, but you might never have really experienced a proper display. Next time the opportunity arises to go to a big public display, even if you don’t like fireworks. They’re usually free too.

2. Caves

Being in a cave feels like being inside the planet, because I guess you basically are. 

There are a few different ways to experience caves. You might come across them on holiday (usually seaside-y cliff-y areas), or you might be at a tourist location where guided tours are offered. I once visited the caves in Cheddar Gorge (unfortunately, not made of cheese) and Wookey Hole. 

3. The Controlled Demolition Of A Tall Building 

Now this sounds like a weird one, but I have my reasoning. Last Summer my local council decided to demolish four blocks of high-rise flats in the centre of the city. I watched from my house. It was really bizarre to see these huge buildings reduced to a pile of rubble. The locals were warned to shut all their windows before leaving to watch the demolition as the dust cloud grew to cover most of the city. 

These days more and more of these buildings are being destroyed because they are too expensive to maintain and the living conditions are not the most pleasant, so you  might be lucky enough to see one of these demolitions.