Wrapping gifts

Mary had helped mum bake some tasty treats earlier. 

They had made, gingerbread, shortbread (granny’s favourite) biscuits and some cookies they could wrap up and give out as gifts. 

The short bread was going to be given for both granny’s to enjoy with their tea. 

The ginger bread was for the neighbours.

The cookies and biscuits were for aunties and cousins. 

Mary might have taken a few to test they were yummy before mum put them into jars and wrapped with a ribbon and a gift tag so we could tell who they were for.

Presents do not need to be expensive to mean a lot to the person, advised Mum.  Its the thought behind them matters, and everyone loved Mum’s baking.

Now all the baking was complete onto wrapping all of the other presents, that were not recommended to eat.

Reams of paper, patterned paper, tissue paper, ribbon, fancy stick-on bows and sticky tape were strewn across the table.

It was not usually this bad for birthdays or anniversary's or surprise’s but for Christmas there was so much! 

So many gifts scattered round the room, this was going to take some time.

Mary loved watching mum wrap up the presents.  Especially when she disguised some because they were awkward shapes making it even harder for people to guess what they were. 

Mary tried to help wrapping the presents last year but it didn’t end so well. Mary might have got tangled in all the sticky tape and ripped the paper. This year Mary decided to just watched Mum and bring juice and biscuits when asked. 

Mum was very cleaver when she wrapped presents; she never took too much paper and always managed to cover the gift fully.  With a few folds and a bit of tape the item would be hidden completely until Christmas. 

The skill baffled Mary, her folds didn’t hide, they only ripped the paper, so she left it to the expert.

Mary liked how dad wrapped up all of his presents (he might have got stuck in sticky tape in the past too)

Dad liked to use colorful gift bags that not only hid the shape of the item but were super easy to use and if you really wanted to you could close up the top so no one could take a sneaky peak before Christmas day.

It took all afternoon but the pile of presents under the Christmas tree grew and grew.  They were possibly about to run out of space but Mum got up from the table and put down the last of the gifts under the tree.

“Is that a good pile of surprises?” Asked mum quite delighted with herself.

“Yea, its the best” giggled Mary as Mum got up and gave Mary a big

squishy hug with a big smile to match the one on Mary's face. 

Not too long to wait now, we’ll all have to be on our best behaviour so Santa keeps our names on his nice list joked mum with a wink.

©joannehepburn 11/12/2016