Just in case people are starting to wrap, a couple of tips I discovered last year...
1 - Stocking presents
I know not everybody wraps them but lots of people do. Last year I bought some paper sweetie bags from ebay - think I got red and white stripe, red and white polka dot and green and white stripe , (keeping it traditional!) about 100 of each, in either 5x7 or 7x9 inch sizes. It cost about £2-4 per 100 depending on size and colour, but my stash of bags should last for at least 3 years!
But instead of having to cut paper and sticky tape and wrap each present individually for the stocking I could just pop it in the best size bag and scrunch it shut - occasionally it needed a tiny bit of tape to secure but not often. If there's anything bigger - think I had to do this once - I just used two bags and scrunched and then used tape to secure them together to make sure the wrapping didn't fall off. It wasn't picture perfect but it was all jolly and festive and perfectly fine - the dc certainly didn't notice any difference - and it was sooooo much quicker to do than ordinary wrapping! If anything it took them longer to get the parcels out than normal as they had to unscrunch rather than just rip the paper off...
This is a typical bag seller on ebay - they seem to have good deals on 100 or 200 stripey paper bags. However depending on what colours, design and sizes you want, it's worth spending a few minutes to get the best price for what you want. But really did make life easy!
2 - Ordinary present wrapping
I usually do the one paper for one child thing to make life easy and not having to label presents. However, this year, I've realised that I have loads of oddments of paper so I'm going to use them and label everything instead (Santa will of course have his own paper as usual too!).
To speed things up, I've cut some of the rolls in half or in one third/two thirds (we're talking supermarket paper rather than anything special!). means that I can power through loads of things from quite small to dvds to ds's boot buddy to games and lego - because I'm just cutting off from the smaller roll. It's much less unwieldy, and you only need to cut one side per present - as if you're cutting a very wide piece of ribbon.
OK so there are a couple of things that the paper might be a bit too big for but as it's all about speed and ease I can either trim and throw away or incorporate into the folds - and stick and it's done. No faffing around trying to get the best fit and most presents into the smallest amount of paper (I'm using up the oddments so happy to power through it )
Hope that makes sense - will try to post a photo tomorrow if it doesn't and anyone is interested!