I love wrapping up pretty present, but I'm the first to admit I don't always take the time to wrap them and end up using gift bags stuffed with tissue. But honestly I love wrapping a pretty present and seeing my children's face light up when they unwrap their gift. Plus wrapping gifts, verses buying gift bags is much more

affordable

. Use the extra money you save on buying all this gift bags and spend it on gifts! With Christmas just around the corner, I wanted to share my five tips for wrapping a pretty present.

Good Wrapping Paper is Key

. The better wrapping paper you use, the easier it will be to wrap your present vs. cheap paper that will tear when wrapping. The gold and white wrapping paper is from

Sugar & Paper LA

and is super thick and such a good quality, it made wrapping presents super easy. Also stuff the inside of the box with tissue paper, it makes unwrapping the gift so much fun!

Use fabric ribbon or twine to finish off your present

. Buying pre-made ribbon & bows is more expensive than buying fabric ribbon, plus making your own bows look so much prettier!

Take your time

. There's nothing worse than being on a time crunch and you have 20 presents that need wrapping and its midnight Christmas Eve, I know because I've been there. It sucks, don't make the same mistake. When you set aside a weekend of two before Christmas to wrap presents it makes the entire process more fun. When I wrap presents, I usually do them in the evening while watching Christmas movies.

Solid Wrapping Surface & Good Tape

. Wrap gifts on a solid surface such as a desk or dining room table. A large working space ensures your able to create nice creases in the paper to tightly wrap each gift. Also good tape is key!

Use various Ribbon Sizes & Go for Contrast

. For Smaller wrapped gifts, oversize ribbon has huge impact. On larger size presents use a small to medium size ribbon. This year when buying wrapping paper, I choose to go with white and gold paper and went bright turquoise ribbon for high contrast. I love how the turquoise pops against the gold paper. I also added cute gift tags to each present to help make them feel polished, vs using sticker labels.

Quick Tip on Bows, when using oversize ribbon, first wrap the present with the ribbon, and then tie a bow and hot gun the bow on the ribbon. It really creates a polished look, like on the present above.

I hope these tips help you this Holiday season in wrapping pretty presents, and saving those coins and not spending extra on a bunch of gift bags! When do you start wrapping presents during the Holidays?

Still in need of some gift ideas? I've created a several Modern Holiday Gift Guides:

and

(filled with lots of goodies!)

I snapped this picture the other day (and shared in Instagram) and I wanted to share a quick update on decorating the outside of our home for the Holidays. I'm often inspired by the colors we use in our home to decorate for Christmas. This year I was inspired to use shades of turquoise and gold to decorate our home, see more our of Christmas decor here, which prompted me to re-do our Christmas Wreaths on our front door.

While, I loved the pretty red check ribbon against our front door, see more here. I wanted to colors we used inside to also be apart of the colors we use outside. I'm so in love with how the wreaths and turquoise ribbon look against our Chartreuse front door. The wreaths are such a pretty welcome to greet our guests! To hang the wreaths, I used a wreath holder which is hidden underneath the ribbon (so sneaky right!) Over the weekend we hung fresh garland outside our front door and next up plan on adding lights (this afternoon) I'm so looking forward to sharing Monday how our the outside our home looks for Christmas!

Have you started decorating the outside of your home for Christmas?