Kvelden før kvelden* and a few cute printables that will make you look totally crafty and clever.

December 23rd is known as Little Christmas Eve (lille juleaften) in Norway, and marks the start of Christmas when people get ready to hunker down for a few days of family, food and celebrations. We arrived at the cabin where we will be spending the next week and put together Christmas in what felt like minutes. The Christmas tree is up, there is a blazing fire in the fireplace, we're in the middle of a snowy forest, for goodness sakes, and I have firmly rooted myself next to the treat table. We're there, friends!

In case, you like me, are a bit of a last-minuter, I wanted to show you a few last minute life-savers that I found on Pinterest: First, there are these gift tags from Kelli Murray that completely saved my gift-wrapping bacon when I ran out. You can download and print them for free from her blog, and they turned out so fantastically cute I may never buy another gift tag again. I printed mine at home on white card stock, but printer paper would do in a pinch too. There's also a whole roundup of free printable gift tags here. People are talented!

So cute! I borrowed this photo from Kelli Murray, because I'm too lazy to take my own.

Second, I wanted to show you these little gift boxes that we put together using this printable from Design Mom. We (meaning Nick) modified them a bit because we were in a time crunch and didn't want to cut out all of those little windows. We also only had white card stock, so we added a little color to ours and stuck the wreath directly on the house. Oh, and we added a little message to the blank side of the house. They were very quick and easy to make, with the most time consuming part being the scoring and folding. They made very sweet little neighbor gifts, and will fancy up the humblest of offerings.

I love that they look like a little street! 

Anyway, dinner is almost ready, so it is time for me to stop being the recluse with the laptop and go and join in the fun with the family. Hope you're enjoying yourself wherever you are, whatever you're doing!


*The night before the night.