*** I received the following products through Penny Wise Office for the purpose of this feature. All photos contained below are property of Momma Told Me Blog 2013.
Momma Told Me: There's still much more to be done!
As we prepare for the week of gluttony and turkey overdosing, one monumental yearly milestone looms ahead; the gift giving season. Whether you're preparing a mall attack route for 3 AM Black Friday sales, or have been carefully hoarding seasonal gifts throughout the entire year (me), you're sure to face the challenges of wrapping. Now, I'm not Martha Stuart- I don't plan multi-part gift towers with seamless rivers of bows and alternating paper; but I do like my presents to look, well, presentable. If you're like Jay, with two left thumbs, just the thought of covering a gift can be overwhelming, let alone coordinating labels and tape that matches. That's why Penny Wise Office is here to showcase some of this season's must have Holiday Preparation tools.

I remember the first year my father discovered he could print his holiday cards, gift tags, and return address labels at home. He must have bought a mountain of Avery products featuring everything from gloss finish photo-cardstock to pre-scored hanging gift tags. Of course, during my childhood, the print quality was much less than it is today, and using these tools meant downloading special software. Boy have the times changed! With the modern InkJet print drivers, PDF formatting, and FREE Avery printable templates available online, anyone can make custom holiday labels, cards, and more, without any experience. People spend a lot of money each year paying for custom cards to be made for them, with no option to add on more if they run out, or to edit the finer design points. Avery allows the user to instantly preview thousands of templates and even alter them with added graphics and text, all from your internet browser!


Of course heavy duty wrapping, and especially shipping, can require some heavy duty materials. If I had a dollar for every time I've tried to gnaw a ribbon or piece of twine in half, while wrapping towers of gifts, I'd have a much nicer car! From trusted brand, Fiskars, the Cuts + More Scissors are the veritable Swiss Army Knife of the consumer scissors market. Including a bonus sheath that not only protects your scissors, and tiny hands, Cuts + More also offers 8 unique features designed to multi-task during the holiday season, and year round for crafts and more. The sheath itself has an included tape cutter notch and scissors sharpener (which works well when the scissors transition to 'take apart' mode for cleaning). These unique scissors also have built in wine, twine, and light rope cutters, as well as a bottle opener, pointed awl tip, and ergonomic handles. I found these to be a little excessive for simple wrapping paper cutting, but especially useful in decoration and shipping.


Of course the work doesn't stop once the packages are wrapped, there's plenty of labeling and decorating to be done! We whipped up some fancy
Avery Embossed, Silver, Round Labels which make wonderful envelope seals for announcements, or 'From' labels for gifts.Users can visit www.avery.com/print and type in their product number to instantly view pre-made templates. Some browsers require the finished template to be transmitted to a PDF format for printing, so be sure that your Adobe Reader is up to date, to avoid any alignment of scaling issues. Labels should also always be printed with the settings to 'Best' quality and 'Label' paper format. Check for print driver updates to ensure access to the latest format options.


Since a large portion of my family lives on the other side of the country, early gift preparation is a must- especially when planning the logistics of holiday shipping. Because my gifts usually arrive a few weeks before the holiday I like to dress up my package boxes with some colorful tape, stickers, ribbon, and more. Of course, you can't have loose items on a US postal box, so my options are usually limited. Thanlkfully, Scotch has come up with a variety of easy to use, decorative tape products to help you wrap and ship all year round, in style. First, the Scotch Pop-Up Tape dispenser provided easy pull, pre-cut, strips to help you wrap faster than ever before. Next the
Scotch Expressions decorative tapes span packing tape and printed scotch tape to truly dress up those parcels. Sold in 3 roll packs, the Expressions Scotch Tape rolls easily fit into any traditional dispensers and offer a slightly thicker tape for heavy duty packaging.
I'll admit, I get a little carried away with my packaging and presentation, but why should all the fun be inside the package? I'll admit, if this box arrived on my doorstep I might be inclined to put it under the tree like that! Which is a viable solution for those who don't have access to shipping boxes or wrapping and need to send an unwrapped gift across country. In all,
Penny Wise Office had brought together some great brands to keep your holiday preparation stress free and stylish. Visit them online today to request your free catalog and enjoy fast, free, shipping nationwide.
What Daughter Says: Don't forget the wrapping- stock up on holiday preparation must haves today.
One Momma Told Me reader will win a Holiday Preparation gift bundle valued at $120, from Penny Wise Office!