Thoughts on wrap, wrappers and wrappering

Homesite on ETSY

What a time to live through.  Has anyone else thought about how history making 2020 will be? I can just see the endless stream of books, movies, documentaries, podcasts historical, theses -- the future meets the past and drags it along to explain whatever present there will be.

I think this quarantine will change many things.

• Social interaction will change - how we greet each other, the space we keep between us.  Like the folks in the East who have already lived through multiple epidemics, masks will become a more ordinary part of attire, but with bling and flair ! Has anyone seen the face mask content on Vogue? 
• The usual means and methods of distribution of goods, already having been steadily transformed, will be drastically upended.  Will this be the final blow to high margin brick and mortar? The beginning of the real online economy? How do we preserve local community with that going on? I don't think anyone really knows, but lots of "experts" are speculating!
• With some notable (and sad) exceptions, the vast majority of people have been treating each others with kindness, compassion and respect. There are some really fun things out there in the interwebs -- who else follows SomeGoodNews? Who else is heartened by the beautiful content our favorite celebs are putting out?   If we can figure out how to preserve that, and build on that -- wow! 

This quarantine has certainly changed my ideas on how to go forward with this blog.  A long time ago, based on one viral pin on Pinterest, I started with the idea I would just focus on pretty wrapping ideas. That evolved alongside my evolving awareness of the impact of everyday life on the environment -- I started looking for more ecologically responsible ways to live my ordinary life, including pretty gift wrapping. What you won't find here -- and I am sorry for anyone this offends -- is a rigid approach that sends the message how bad it is for the environment to consume anything not absolutely necessary for bare survival (so really we should just hand gifts to our loved ones unwrapped or you know, just don't do it. )

There has to be small steps people can take and be happy about taking, so we can take the next small step to improve and then the next and so on. Doing the reverse is how we got here -- we didn't as a culture all wake up one morning and say "hey let's trash the environment as our new goal"! It was incremental and not completely intentional. And part of the answer to reverse it is a lot of people like me and you encouraging those incremental steps.  This is not a knock on the Greta Thurnbergs of the world. I admire her and those like her beyond words. Those voices are the ones bringing awareness to the problem. This is just how I think I can help.

However, I am interested in more than just gifts and if I am going to make a social media chronicle  part of my life it has to reflect those interests.  The thread I identified tying it all together is beautiful design. I love patterns, shapes, materials and textures for things we use everyday that are beautiful. So I am going to start to include some posts on examples of that beautiful design -- again, hopefully, more environmentally responsible than not -- in the area of fashion, makeup and home design.

If that sounds shallow, (does anyone else even worry about being shallow?) I should mention that right now, I spend a lot of time on spiritual things, working on making myself a better person.  Faith is a personal and important thing and I see so many great examples of people living their ideals out there -- I applaud that and enjoy that. It's my thought that a beautiful inside should translate to beautiful surroundings and the care and flair you take with creating the parts of your life. In this blog,  I want to focus on showing some ways people are doing that.

So in summary -- heavy on the gift wrapping, spiced up with other pretty stuff that is kinder to the environment than not.   Does that resonate?  If so, here we go 2020! I don't care that you are half over! Let's do this!

xxoo
Norine