Mini Present Decorations

I’m a Thanksgiving purist, in that I insist we wait until after thanksgiving before we get all Christmasy. But now that we’re here, I’m onboard with kicking off Christmas!

I’ve had this idea for a while, and fortunately I was at my mom’s house for the weekend – she has a LOT of scrap Christmas paper plus blocks of wood that were perfect. I’ve been saving/hoarding ends of cut wood at our house too, so I’m sure I’ll be making even more of these once I get back to my house. Either way, if you’ve got scrap blocks of wood, odd bits of Christmas paper, and ribbon, this DIY decoration is free and easy to make! You can make as many or as few as you like, too – little stacks are cute, and giant stacks would be cool too.

Supplies:

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Scrap blocks of wood
Scrap Christmas wrapping paper
Ribbon
Tape and scissors

Step 1: Prep the blocks. If you’ve cut all these blocks, they might have rough edges that need to be sanded down, otherwise the edges might rip through the paper. My mom, fortunately, had sanded these blocks a while ago because she’d originally wanted to make colorful building blocks out of them for my girls.

Step 2: Wrap the blocks. I tried to do 3-4 blocks for each wrapping paper that I had, just to get colorful variety. You could also do these as all the same wrapping paper for a more unified or minimal look.

Very simply, you just wrap the blocks like you would a real present. If you don’t have big enough strips to cover the whole block, I found it was fine if the bottom still showed some exposed wood – you won’t see the undersides anyway.

Step 3: Add ribbon ties. I considered using a hot glue gun to connect each “present” and hold them secure, but the ribbon held them pretty well once it was wrapped around a few times. If you’re doing a giant stack, you might want to hot glue them together to help with stability. Or, if you don’t want ribbon at all, you could glue them for a different t look entirely!

First, I practiced stacking the presents to see what heights I wanted and which paper looked best side by side.

Again, basically wrap the ribbon around the wrapped blocks like you would do for a real present. I found that once I got the ribbons around once tightly, the blocks stayed in place and it was fairly easy to wrap the ribbon up and down and around again to get the look I wanted.

For a few of the stacks, I used bigger, prettier ribbon, and that I only had to put around once. That would look really pretty with fancier wrapping paper, especially with golds or whites. Again, we were going for colorful, but a mom can dream. 🤪

Step 4: Set them out! I arranged my stacks on my mom’s little ledge around her staircase, and they look quite cute all sitting together, but we might space them around once other decorations go up. They’d also look cute with garland or greens or lights behind and around them.

That’s it! I’m glad these look cute, and it was a great way to use all those scrap pieces of wood, not to mention the odd sizes of Christmas wrapping paper that were just waiting for a use.