Simple Lovely Gift Wrapping Station

I love pretty packaging.  It can make even the humblest gift feel special. 

I'm not, however, particularly fond of the wrapping part or the mess of lots of supplies. 

Wrapping takes a long time, so I set out this year to make the job as simple and pleasant as possible.

This little trunk was made for me by Sister and Handy Andy for my birthday last year.  It was to be my "Crafting Trunk".  Sister had thoughtfully filled it with all sorts of helpful crafting supplies in nice little labeled bags and boxes.  
Since then my supplies have outgrown the space, so I turned it into my little Wrapping Station.

 

The trunk was from Hobby Lobby, but Andy fitted it with dandy little ribbon rod.  So clever - certainly one of my favorite gifts ever. 

 My goal was to keep my supplies as simple as possible...but still lovely, of course.

Here's my Christmas Ribbon picks.  All of this ribbon is from Hobby Lobby, found in the regular ribbon section {not the Christmas aisles, so even if your Christmas aisles are picked over - like ours our - you can still find some lovely "holiday ribbon"} I picked ribbon that matched my Christmas decor.  The twiney string on the end is also from Hobby Lobby - I found it in the shelf by the registers.

I love using real ribbon.  It can be reused again and again.

 And beautiful ribbon makes the simplest wrapping paper pop.  I'm using plain brown wrapping paper for all my presents this year.  This keeps me from having rolls and rolls of Christmas paper to store all year long.  Also, I can use it year round matched with any ribbon and "brown paper packages tied up with string" are always pretty charming.

These are my gift tags.  The ones on top are from Michaels and below from Hobby Lobby.  I found the top ones last, but they were the best deal - 20 for $1.99.  I'll try to get one size bigger for larger packages, but they were out at the time.

Then we have my much-loved typewriter letter stamps.

  

I used them to stamp the tags with "to" and "from".  I also like to just stamp out the whole name - with a bigger tag. 

 

So there's my little wrapping station.  

{the felt trees in the corner are ornaments I got last year on clearance to be used as gift toppers}

It made wrapping all of these such fun.

But don't be fooled - all of these gifts are those my ahead-of-the-game-sweetheart had already purchased for his dad and brother.  I still have almost all my Christmas shopping ahead of me... but at least now I'm looking forward to the wrapping part. 

{Linking to Life Made Lovely Monday & Bowl Full of Lemons}