Me and my big ideas ...

(Hubby doesn't feel good and went to bed at 6:30, poor sweetie. So I'm footloose and fancy free on Friday night to tell you about the um, insanity, known as Sally and Her Big Ideas teehee!)

Ay yi yi.

I always have to have the Grand Plan. Simple just doesn't do it for me. And I make myself nuts.

I want to be the magical fairy godmother for my nieces - I wanted to be this for them even when my brother was alive but it's like a gazillion times more since he passed away. And then my mother passed away. Ever since I've felt the responsibility to take both their places for the girls, on top of being my usual obsessive compulsive, weaver of dreams, Auntie self.

One of my life beliefs ... life is short, make every day special.

So anyway ... my Everest of a plan this time was I wanted to send them a "Party in a Box", along with the books I bought them. I wanted to make them party hats and a garland and include these really good chocolate chips I found at Whole Foods recently, Dagoba Organic Choco Drops, SO YUMMY! And I wanted to print out a chocolate chip cookie recipe for them and wrap it up all nice.

Thank heavens I realized that I had better wrap the books I got for them first, in case I ran out of time. (Somewhere inside my silly brain, lurks a brain with sense.)

I'm all about the presentation ... it has to be FUN too! I had been thinking about using my roll of craft paper and making some tags about recycling. My poor nieces, they always get a message from their old flower child Auntie, along with their presents.

I'm not quite sure how the inspiration came together but the jumping off point was a package of Martha Stewart "Occasion" ribbons. I noticed it had a Happy Birthday ribbon and a Congratulations ribbon, exactly what I needed and the colors were perfect to go with the craft paper.

And then ... serendipity! It came to me that the Whole Foods paper bags would go perfectly with the Martha Stewart ribbons.

(I'm sure there are some of you out there guffawing and rolling on the floor over my use of grocery bags for wrapping paper, saying Sally's gone round the bend this time!)

So I wrapped their books in the recycled grocery bags, used the MS ribbons, made them woven hearts (out of scrapbook paper that I've had for YEARS, just sitting there and this was it's moment to finally shine LOL) and I also made some bookmarks. VOILA!

Except ... I ran out of time for the Grand Plan. The Party in a Box. WAH!

But I got the package to the Post Office in time and I really had fun doing all the wrapping. So that's that, for the time being. I'm thinking maybe I'll adapt the party in the box for when my niece goes away to college and dorm life in September.