A little 2015 DIY project

Happy 2015!! I hope everyone had a great time celebrating the new year with friends, family and loved ones :)

January 1st started off with a Christmas decoration DIY project (a tip that I picked up from work). 

Basically, what this is is a large "decorative" box you can use to store your Christmas ornaments and decorations when its NOT Christmas... but during the holidays, you can put this lovely box under your tree (giving it the illusion that its one giant present). Maybe its because we don't have kids, but Bobby and I don't normally have a lot of presents under our tree anyway... and lets face it, presents get wrapped the night before or the morning of our family Christmas party, so there really isn't very much going on under our tree. In fact, since we currently don't have side tables (Bobby is working on these right now), our board games are the boxes that are hanging out under the tree ;)

Materials needed:

- One large box that has a lid that's separate from the bottom part of the box... size up to you, depending on how many decorations you own and/or how much space you want to take up under your tree (I used a printer paper box I got from work)

- Pretty but durable wrapping paper... I suggest buying craft paper because it's thicker than regular wrapping paper (I bought this red craft wrapping paper from Michael's. If you do end up going to Michael's, don't forget to use your coupons - 40% off every week or 50% off certain weeks)

- Fancy ribbon

- Scotch tape

- Glue gun or double sided tape (optional)

Okay, first thing's first - wrap the lid of the box and the actual box SEPARATELY with wrapping paper. This is actually easier said than done, especially if you are like me and you are not a present wrapping guru. Be sure to wrap both pieces separately so that you can open and close the box as you need (DUH, sorry for having to be Captain Obvious). Be extra careful around the corners because once you wrap the box with wrapping paper, it's more difficult to put the lid back on (since the box is "fatter"). I used scotch tape to reinforce the outside corners of the bottom part of the box and the inside corners of the lid (since these are the parts of the box that will be rubbing against each other when you start trying to shove the lid on)

Once you have the box wrapped up, use fancy ribbon to accent the box. My plan was to do the regular "criss/cross" ribbon design with a pretty bow on top... but I ran out of ribbon and very fortunately had exactly enough to just wrap around the box. As above, make sure you put the ribbon separately on the lid and the bottom part of the box. I suggest using tape to hold the ribbon in place while you line up the ribbon on the lid and bottom part of the box (I taped the ribbon on the inside of the box so that it doesn't ruin the wrapping paper when I have to adjust and readjust the wrapping paper while lining up the ribbon). Once you are satisfied with the positioning of the ribbon you can use double sided tape or hot glue to more permanently hold the ribbon in place). I have not done this part yet. I am planning on using hot glue because I don't have double sided tape. Will update you all to let you know if this is a good idea (I'm worried it might ruin the wrapping paper)....

Another optional step is to make a fancy bow to put on top of the box. As mentioned above, I ran out of ribbon so I didn't get this far. Also, I have absolutely now idea how to make a fancy bow with ribbon so I guess you can say I lucked out ;)

The final product should look something like this:

And this:

I finally had some time to work on this project... just in time for the time of the year when decorations need to be put back in the storage :)