Cole and I brought pretty packages to our Community Group Secret Santa.

On Thursday night, we celebrated Christmas with our Community Group from church. The main event was the Secret Santa exchange. We used an online Secret Santa organizer called Elfster. With name in hand, we each found a $10 gift and brought it to Community Group on Thursday. Guests dropped them in a basket by the door, to keep things secretive of course. Then after they were all distributed, we went around and had to guess who the gift came from. Cole ended up with the ingredients to make a gin and tonic, which he will probably need by the time finals and papers are over. I got to add a cute, polka dot Moleskine notebook and an Aladdin mug, which matches my Aladdin water bottle actually. Perfectness.

I received an awesome purple mug and notebook.

As far as our gifts, Cole enlisted some wrapping help, okay, more like I offered to do it because I really like it. He had a "fancy" glass for me to wrap. We left it in the original, brown-paper bag, fluffed a little tissue paper on top, tied on a calligraphy tag and topped it off with a little paper bow. I even made the bow from our Christmas paper. I'll provide a little tutorial here in a few days. They have been fun, and super easy, to make.

Paper bows make a great addition to a little brown bag.

I I matched my wrapping with the superhero gift inside. I scouted Pinterest for ideas and drew little comic books blurbs on thick kraft paper. Even though it's not my specialty, it turned out really cute ... if that is something that you can say about comic books.

I drew a little speech bubble for the "to" on the gift.

I added a little more impact with a "BAM!"

And a "POW!"

My little comic doodles were a hit.

As you can see, I like wrapping. We won't do our wrapping until we are back in Kansas, but I do have calligraphy gift tags and a pile of paper bows ready for wrapping.