Holiday Tour, Friends and Presents

It's that time of year, rushing around making gifts, shopping for gifts, hoping to fit in time for friends and family before the BIG Day!

I found out about a Home Holiday Tour in my sister's neighborhood and decided to invite 2 friends and take the tour of 7 beautifully decorated for Christmas. Then I imposed a little on my sister, whose home was one of the homes in the tour and asked if after the home tour we could end up at her house and have lunch and do some gift wrapping.

What could see say to her older sister except SURE!

So I invited Bonnie and Jane a couple of dear friends to join me. I wish I could of invited more of my close friends but sometimes smaller gatherings are fun. Hopefully my other friends will understand sometimes bigger groups are harder to organize and I'm clearly not organized at this time of year :}

Jane, Bonnie and myself met and started the tour in Rancho Santa Fe. Here are a few pictures of the homes we toured. Oh I wish I was a better photographer or able to capture the magnitude of some the things we saw but it was beautiful and put me in the holiday spirit.






Jane had to take a ride in this home's elevator! If you know Jane, you know this is her FaBUlUoUs Pose :}








Now after the tour, which we could have used a few more hours to drool over all the decorations and collections....we went to my sisters and had lunch and a then went to work like little elves to create presents of beauty from my stash of "junque". I got this idea from Heather Bullard....she has so many elegant ideas. Thanks Heather :}

I wrapped/created the following two presents before the party. For the first one I used wallpaper and a twig from a bush and the cute clip-art from Kristin of Retro Cafe. The second package is for my niece and I hope she appreciates the uniqueness of the package. I used alumunium foil and then covered it with bubblewrap.




Here's some pics of our wrapping party.








Here's some of the "finished" presents....they were so fun and beautiful. I know the people receiving them will be crying when they have to unwrap them.







Here's wishing you and yours a happy holiday season.