Gift tags

I just got back from a fast and intense trip up to Berkeley to pick up my youngest daughter for Christmas and help her move out of her apartment. On the way I stopped by to visit my oldest daughter and her husband and play with this little girl ...

{Adi - 13 weeks}

I spent the day with with them and in the evening we drove around looking at Christmas lights and stopped by a Christmas tree lot. The lot was really disappointing and way overpriced for what they had left so we gathered up some branches and made our own little tree.

Did you see these ornaments at Target this year? I love the bright colors and cute little animals & they were only $1.00 each! Next year when Adi is older she will be able to touch them without breaking them and they would even make a cute little crib mobile after Christmas.

I left their house early the next morning, drove four hours to Berkeley, helped my youngest pack up her stuff, made four trips to storage, one trip to her new apartment, one trip to the Goodwill, had dinner at the best Mexican restaurant in town (best Sangria ever), loaded up the car with what was coming home, did a quick room clean-up and drove four hours back to spend the night with my other daughter again. It was the fastest trip I have ever taken! But oh, so productive!!!

Speaking of productive, before I left I had played around with some gift tags for for a little project I am working on. I like to make my own tags for my "neighbor gifts" (candy, cookies, spiced nuts or cheese balls usually) but by the time I am at that point to make tags, I am usually behind schedule and quickly put something together.

{Last year's  New Year's gifts - I gave out pink champagne in honor of the new color of the new year ... Honeysuckle.} 

But this year, I am ahead of schedule and wanted to play around with some nicer tags. It all started when I found these beautiful white soft fleece blankets at Ikea for $3.49 each ...

I couldn't resist them.

I thought I would use them as neighbor gifts this year ... and so I started thinking about ways to present them.

First I found an image of a chevron fabric on the computer, dragged the image into Microsoft Word and tweaked the color. Next I added a text box and came up with this:

I printed up a few to test them out and then realized I was out of ink and had to stop. But I am liking the direction they are going. 

Off to get more ink ...