I have stopped buying wrapping paper, mainly because I hate having tiny bits of random paper leftover, that seem to hang around in my (soon to be repurposed) wrapping paper bin for years on end.  I hate always wondering-- "do I have wrapping paper appropriate for a 3 year old girl?  a 59 year old man?"  I like to keep things simple, so last winter I splurged on a giant roll of medium weight kraft paper which, with a little embellishment will suit most purposes.  I've been dressing the plain packages with various ribbons, rubber stamps, decorative tapes, etc.

I have also begun to save various bits of pretty paper to fill in when I don't want to use kraft paper.  I have some comic paper, maps pulled from National Geographic magazine, old calendar pages, which will soon be used to wrap gifts for our favorite people.  Elliot had a birthday party to attend on Sunday, so I pulled out one of the maps and wrapped up the gift (Lego).  I left the accompanying Lego bin showing rather than try and cover it's odd shape.  I tied it with a red ribbon and attached a small tiger with scrapbooking dots (I don't scrapbook, but seem to use these tiny dots for everything).

I don't know if you've seen these Lego bins, but Elliot has two of them-- one to store all of his Lego manuals, and one to use on the go.  They come with a pretty large green base to build on.  We can get ours locally at Meijer, but I see a set of four on Target.com.  They are on some websites for insane prices, but I've paid anywhere from $6-10 dollars for them, so that Target price isn't bad.