I just glanced at yesterday's post and realized I forgot to give it a title. Oops! Is it just me, or do you find that the title is often the hardest part of writing blog posts? Or writing in general? I still remember how my teachers used to say, "Start with the title." What?!?! That *completely* goes against who I am and how I do things. How can you give something a title before you know what it consists of? It's absurd to my little brain.
So as you probably remember, this year I am staying with my dad & step-mom, which has been quite the adventure, probably 90% good, if I were to put a fake statistic on the experience. Well, last night my dad got home from work when I was in the communal kitchen, unpacking and rewrapping my husband's Christmas presents from my mother-in-law (she had them delivered to our house so that 1) he wouldn't peek and 2) she wouldn't have to pay sales tax - that was the order of importance!). So first let me say that Amazon is seriously the undisputed king of overpackaging items - holy cow! This would make more sense if I explained the size of the items involved, but of course then this would turn out to the be only post that my husband reads this month (go away, honey! I want you to be surprised!) so you'll just have to trust me when I say that the largest box could fit several small children in it. It was like Babushka dolls, every time I opened and removed a box, there was another box nestled inside it.
See? Now I'm getting off on a bunny trail about packaging when really what I wanted to tell you about was what I did *with* the packaging. I've been considering festive packaging for my own presents for my husband, which are small & multiple. All of that corrugated cardboard made me think, hmmm...perhaps I can fold fun little boxes in usual shapes! I started with a small cube, just to see if I could figure out how to do it, then progressed to a diamond shape. I approached this task the same way I do most problems in life: first I visualized it, then I did it. So there I was, ruler and pen in hand, tracing out the lines for a 3-D diamond box made out of one piece of cardboard, when my dad interrupted himself mid-sentence:
Him: "Hmm....did you take an engineering course in college?"
Me: "Uhhh, no..." (did I mention I was a music major?)
Him: "Oh...maybe a design course?"
Me: "Nope, no design..." (and my masters is in music therapy?)
Him: "So...how do you know how to do that?"
Me: "I don't know....I guess I just thought about it and figured out the lines and angles in my head and now I'm just...doing it?"
And you know what? It worked! Not perfectly, of course - I eyeballed all of the angles, rather than using a protractor (or is it a compass? I could never keep those two pieces of equipment straight in high school!). I think it is a recognizable diamond, anyway. What do you think?
ps: After I made sure the box would come together the way I cut it, I covered it in wrapping paper. Amazon's shipping boxes are not *that* festive, LOL
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