WFMW: Eternal Christmas Gift Bag

(Holy cow! It's a non-power-outage-related post!)

Start a gift-giving tradition with a loved one by buying a sturdy gift bag and using it for their gift year after year.

About ten years ago, I gave my mom a bottle of bubble bath in a tall gift bag about the size of a wine bottle (which she may have preferred!). The bag was nothing special, but it was a Hallmark: well-made, sturdy, and so cute.

So at the end of our festivities that Christmas, she happened to save it and handed it to me, almost as an afterthought, to save for the next Christmas (throw away a perfectly good gift bag? Horrors!).

Now you have to understand something: we have a crowd of nearly 50 people in mom's house every Christmas. A bazillion gifts spill out from under her tree and the "opening ceremony" is chaotic and loud and frenzied. I don't keep track of that gift bag, but somehow it has found its way back to me, emptied of its contents, every year. It still has the original to/from name tag, altered to add Pete's name, then Mickey's, then Alex's (no more room on the tag, thankyouverymuch).

Every year I try to get a little more creative with what goes in the bag. It's a fun challenge to find something to fit into it, but lucky for me Mom is so easy to please that a rolled up dish towel would bring a tear to her eye...

For more Christmas-y good stuff, visit Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer.