So I discovered a new side of myself and I just have to share. I’m pretty crafty. It all started when I bought a bottle of wine to give our neighbors and needed to package it. They pretty much saved our lives when our gas heater thingie was leaking gas a few weeks ago. Well, actually they alerted the proper authorities who sent an expert to check out the situation precisely at the time I arrived home to take a shower and go to dinner. Shower postponed as the expert then thoroughly examined our house (commenting on the “bachelor pad decor”) and declared the gas smell was coming from the trash (seriously?) until I suggested that maybe that wasn’t very likely. After some major head scratching on his part and major freaking out on my part that I was going to die from some sort of gas poisoning with the gas repairman standing right there, he finally figured out it was coming from the heater. Anyways we’ve already established that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room. So after all this the least we could do was give the neighbors a bottle of wine.

My plan was to go to Target and purchase one of those cute little wine gift bags. Only problem was that I didn’t feel like I could go into Target that day. Some days I’m feeling stronger than others and on that particular day I was feeling pretty weak. I knew I could not go in there and walk out with one measly little wine gift bag. My willpower could not take the latest summer apparel just begging for me to buy it. Because somewhere deep down inside I still believe that if I buy summer clothes then it will be summer. And then I started thinking about turkey neck and how I should really get some wrinkle cream which lead to thoughts about wasn’t there some trick that Annette in the movie Grease did to tone her neck and maybe they sell that movie at Target? And if I had that movie wouldn’t it be nice to watch it in bed with a brand new tv and blue ray player for our bedroom?

Can you see why there was absolutely no way that I could go into that store? That’s why I got crafty. I thought about it and decided that those bags are really  glorified brown paper bags anyways and wouldn’t  it be fun to “brown bag” the wine myself? So I went to it. I snagged a grocery bag from the recycling bin but I really wanted it to look organic so the huge logo wouldn’t do. I decided to turn the bag inside out. All I can say about that process is be very careful. Turning a paper bag inside out without ripping it to shreds is harder than it looks. So once that was accomplished I did some artistic arrangement of the bag and viola:

Errrrr, k not exactly what I’d envisioned. There is no way I can give the people who saved our lives this monstrosity. On the other hand, there is a nice, tasty bottle of wine inside and isn’t there some saying that it’s the thought that counts?? As I was weighing my options I saw it. Blue tissue paper just waiting to be wrapped around the wine bottle and secured with a hair tie, tape, rubber band…I wasn’t sure but I knew I was on to something. I still had some odds n ends from the last time I tried to get crafty and found some ribbon. In a jiffy I had a beautifully dressed wine bottle. Mission accomplished! Impulse to shop at Target thwarted, package wrapped and all is right with my little world. Now surely there’s a bottle of wine for me around here somewhere?!