christmas doesn't look as good this year

I spent most of yesterday wrapping up and boxing all our Christmas gifts for family back east.  I am looking forward to what might become my new Christmas tradition:  setting up a wrapping station in front of the TV, munching on a giant Hershey bar and watching soap operas.

I have always liked wrapping gifts and coming up with a new way to do it.  This year, my plan was to make fabric gift bags for everything.  And then, I got sick.

SICK.  ugh.  During one of the more inconvenient weeks of the year.  I'd had big plans for this week that's wrapping up right about now: finish unpacking the living room, finish decorating the apartment for Christmas, finish Christmas shopping (that was supposed to be this past weekend) and then pack everything up, including making all the gift bags and stamping our 80 Christmas cards, with PLENTY of time to get everything to all the right places before the big day without having to pay an arm and a leg in shipping.

Well, most of that didn't happen.  And saddest of all: I couldn't find my supplies for a backup wrapping job, since there was no way I would make it to the fabric store, unearth the sewing machine, and get all the sewing and wrapping and packing and shipping done in the brief window of feeling like a human that I had yesterday.  My backup plan?  Wrap everything in brown paper, tie with twine, and hand-stamp the receiver's name on the package.  Cute and old-timey and coherent.

Except I couldn't find my twine.  Or my stamps.  (They are probably not unpacked yet.)  Not even my emergency jingle bell stash!!  And I had like 2 hours to get it all done.  No time for trips to the store or anything.

So this year, everybody's presents from Brian and Ashley are wrapped in brown package paper and written on with silver Sharpie.

I make Christmas ugly.

I do take solace in the fact that they will be arriving on time, however.  That counts for something, right?  Even though the wrapped gifts are a bit of an eyesore?