Easy Giftwrap Idea: save your old calendars!

It's expensive to buy gift wrap of a quality sturdy enough to calmly endure the delivery route of an Operation Christmas Child shoebox from giver to needy child in a distant country such as Fiji or Vietnam.

However, Samaritan's Purse report that the children especially love the colourful gift wrap, so while I find the red and green "flying shoebox" pre-printed boxes cheery and convenient, this year I haunted the local shoe shop until I found enough stout boxes of the right size (no larger than A4 sheet of paper). It didn't cost me a cent. And, to my delight, neither did the gift wrap part.

Here's how.

I didn't even have to use my own calendars. An 80-year-old friend, shedding her house and most of her worldly goods in order to move in with her daughter's family, offered me several years' worth of New Zealand flora in glossy photographs. At the time, I thought, "Very pretty, but what'll I do with them?" Now I know.

I'm going to ask all my neighbours to save their old calendars. I bet the local Girls' Brigade, who do shoeboxes every year, could use those pretty pictures!