Way back when there was daylight well past 4:30pm and one didn't even think about wearing a coat let alone a scarf, I signed up for the Lovely Package Exchange.  Then burst out laughing to see that my partner was my friend Tina of With This Ring I Thee Obsess; what a funny coincidence that out of hundreds of participates we were paired up... I think that world wide web really wants to make sure that we are friends!  So then we both became buried with the business of life and decided that we would slowly work on our packages and be rebels with the due date.  But it was worth the wait, my friends, Tina sent me the loveliest of packages!

I ripped open the pretty box to dig into a package that included one of my favorite party decoration elements, tissue flowers... 

She included sweet gifts with the packages all set to a theme; Bake, Relax, Make, Give, and Live.

She included such cute things that were just the type of thing that make me do little girly squeals, such as cute little owls, silve cake tester, and pretty handmade cupcake flags...

I am trying to not over-use the word lovely in this post but seriously, it was really such a bunch of lovely to receive in the mail! 

For the package that I sent to Tina, it was an evolution as it kept changing a little bit as time went on and the due date was further away.

For the gifts, I went with two different "themes" that I know Tina enjoys; Tea and Paper.  I got her a tea towel from Elizabeth Bentz and a tea book from Elite Elishi for the tea items.  For the paper I got her pretty labels, letterpress tags, and sweet cards from Postal Press.

The package was then all wrapped up with kraft paper, fall colored flowers, glassine bags, bakers twine, a little tag garland, quotes associated with the item inside, and stitched together with a red zigzag stitch.  A little hint if you do a stitch for a packaging detail, you can use a needle to get the thread to all be on one side and then tie a little knot before cutting so it doesn't unravel.  I captured a few photos of the inprogress state...

Tina has posted some pictures into the flickr group that includes more detail of each of the packages I received (I was way to excited as I ripped into each of them to get proper pictures!) and posted about her package here.