TOPAZ HORIZON

... weren't my usual fabulousness, but that's because it's Christmas! I'm a better gift giver for birthdays, weddings and housewarmings because those are personal occasions but Christmas is just, well, it's a LOT of gifts to buy! So Vince and I give tokens instead, little somethings, ya know, a "Hey, we thought of you!" thing. Here are some of the stuff we gave to family and friends:

hardbound books from Fully Booked and candy from Candy Corner

science kits from Toy Kingdom and beauty/grooming sets from Bench

And the gifts I always give on Christmas: Body Shop Christmas collections!

Just cute little things, right? Now that I'm a mommy, I find that I just can't spend too much time away from my son. So we brought him along to the shops, which wasn't a good idea since Vito's a little devil, sweeping things off shelves and begging and whining for all the brightly colored things that fascinate a little boy. And since I'm pregnant, I'm not fast enough to stop him! So we did all our shopping from three shops. And that already felt like too many shops!

Anyway, this year, I didn't do any gift wrapping. With no household help, I just didn't have the time. So I figured I'd just put them all in brown bags and give them like so. After all, aren't brown paper packages tied up with string a few of our favorite things?

I think I'll do this again next year. It's simple and cheap!

I used to be a fantastic giftwrapper kinda girl--I'd do artsy folds, tie ribbons, add mistletoe and glitter. The works! Last year, I had the utterly insane idea of recycling magazine pages. Yes, it's a good green idea but I just had to take it up a notch and customize. For example, if the gift was a toy car, I looked for ads of cars and used those. If the gift was nail polish, I used nail polish ads, beauty product-beauty pages, book-book review section, food-recipe section, etc. I did not realize how hard it was to actually look for the perfect pages to match the gift! I am never doing that again!

I'll talk more about the holidays soon. This was a lovely season for my little family--even after we had a big scare right before Christmas Eve--and I want to tell you all about it. My Facebook page followers have a bit of an idea; I'll talk more about it here this week. Plus, I want to share my blessings! I've been preparing a blog giveaway but haven't gotten around to doing it because, well, you all know my reason: I have no household help! So stay tuned, folks!

From our home to yours, we wish you all the love, joy, peace and prosperity in the world!