Spend a Sunday... wrapping up presents

Keeping it festive with red and green

I love the present wrapping part of Christmas. It signals the end of the exhausting ordeal of sharpening your elbows to squeeze through crowds to source perfect presents only to end up buying socks and perfume.

It is also the most creative part. With the Christmas tree decorated and the decorations up we always light some candles and put on some Christmas songs. It's just a bit of fun and gets us in the spirit. There is no room at the inn for a Bar Humbug.

My budget went on the presents this year, which meant I had to make the presents look good enough to open, without spending a fortune on the wrapping stuff. I bought simple parcel paper from Ryman's and I tied the parcels with ribbon in every colour imaginable that I bought from Ikea in the sale for 10p!

I found these lovely parcel tags in my local corner shop for 5p each and the pegs were left over from the advent calendar I made at the beginning of the month. The Muji letter stamps added to the parcel feel, while keeping it personal – as you can see with this one for my little sister!

The brown paper and bright bows means that when they are piled under the tree with the inevitable mismatch of wrapping paper that each family member brings, they still look nice.