I decided instead of trying to wrap the bike or just having it out in the open in the house I'd have him go through a scavenger hunt to find it. Hopefully this will make it more memorable for him, though I still remember when I got my first 18 speed bicycle, without a scavenger hunt involved then.
To give it a little more pizazz I decided I'd kind of decorate the clues a little, I went with a pirate/scroll theme.
Blackadder ITC is a great font for this kind of stuff, it screams pirate. I used a peach/tanned colored paper in 8.5/11 size to print my typed up clues.
In Microsoft Word you can create multiple columns for type on one sheet. I changed the page set-up to landscape and used the columns button to divide the page in two. I didn't want a huge sheet for each clue, so 1/2 sounded pretty good.
From there, I used scissors to trim the edges and give them a "scroll" type look. I considered burning the edges for a while....but that was risky and I wanted something that was (mostly) fail-safe.
Once I had all 14 clues cut out I noted where each one went and rolled them up. After tying them I made a little note of the clue number on the outside, so I could put them where they go without messing things up or undoing the scrolls.
He'll probably be disappointed at first when he sees this little box is all that's left...
...but it contains clue #1, leading to...
The big gift!! I kind of led on that it's too big for us to take out of town with us, but also said it wouldn't make sense to carry all of his gifts back and forth, on top of not having room for his brothers' things and his at the same time.
I'm getting excited!!!
Oh yeah, I made that bow. Pretty fancy, for what it started looking like.
I just took some ribbon with wires on the edges and folded it over on itself several times, back and forth, making the length a little smaller with each layer. Kind of like the old printer paper that was connected and had the holes on the edges....I'm too young to know what those machines were called off the top of my head. But like that, folding continuously to make layers.
Then I stapled the center of the folds together, underneath the top layer which was folded into a circle so there wouldn't be an end in the middle. I twisted the wrong-side-out layers right-side-out and twisted and shaped them into the circles seen above. Perhaps one day I'll take photos of this process, but my fingers were borderline frostbitten by the time I finished my work.
Oh and I tied on the tails afterwords. It seems to jazz it up a little.
Hopefully I'll get around to making more gingerbread cookies and sharing the recipe (and modifications) I've found with you, but I try to be a little flexible with Christmas. I have obvious goals like shopping and wrapping, but one batch of cookies (ok two, I've frozen some oatmeal ones ahead too, just in case) and store-bought rather than home-made cards just might have to do, in favor of sanity and sleep.
So far, wrapping a few more things tonight and making cookie dough tomorrow is the goal. We'll see how successful I am...
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