A-Martha-Stewarting we will go!

The Martha Stewart Christmas specials have a certain fascination, a bit like watching an incredibly complicated train wreck. As we watched bits and pieces of them over the past week, we laughed and wondered, who on earth would do any of this?

So Tom decided we would do up some of the gift wrappings in a Martha-esque manner, as a joke. The problem was that Tom, having an eye for design and artistic gifts inherited from both of his parents, can't help making something that he intends to be absurd sometimes turn out pretty classy. These pictures show some of the results. The colors are not all that good in the photos, but you get the idea.

This first one is a sort of overview of the top of the bookcase that divides the living room and the library. At the moment, it is a staging area for gifts as they are readied. Of course, come The Day, all these will be under the tree.


Following are close-ups of a few of the packages. The idea was to take one gift per person and froo-froo it up. The others are pretty simple paper and bows. This first little effort gives you an idea of what I think is fancy enough -- a bell added to the ribbon.


This led to our (my) first Martha-ing by making a ribbon following her instructions and adding more bells. (Can't have too many jingle bells this time of year, right?)


Then Tom got into the act. I have removed the name of the recipient to keep folks guessing. The froo-froo looks silver in the photo, but it is actually more of a rusty-brown, sort of auburn color. There were a lot of ornaments, even trees, this color out there this year.


Then he decided to go with some silver trim, so the ultimate snowflake. This is truly shiny!


And following on a similar note ...


There are a few yet to be done, so updates as circumstances warrant.

And, no, we did not go so far as to make boxes out of chocolate or marzipan! There are limits, after all.