It didn't seem excessive at the time...

For years, I have bought Christmas wrapping paper at the end-of-season sales.  Over time I have bought so much wrapping paper that it's quite possible that I will not need to buy Christmas paper for many years.  Some paper I bought because I liked it.  Some paper I bought because it was cheap.  And now I'm paying the consequences.  I have a lot of paper to use and I have promised myself that I will not buy any more Christmas wrapping paper until I need it.  I am tempted to wrap every gift in a very large box just to use this paper faster, but I will not buy any more Christmas wrapping paper until I need it.  You hear that, Internet?  I WILL NOT BUY ANY MORE CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER UNTIL I NEED IT!

This year I decided to go with a color scheme, in order to have a little continuity under the tree and also to finish off rolls faster.  Since I had so much of it, I decided on red, green, and blue.  Then I realized that I had so much red, green, and red/green plaid that I should save the blue for another year.  Then I decided that I should probably choose one red, one green, and the two plaids because the rolls were already partially used.  And then after wrapping several gifts, I realized that I had so much red and red/green plaid that I didn't even need to use the green paper, which was still wrapped in plastic.  So red and red/green plaid it is. 

The assortment of papers that I originally planned to use.

The papers that I actually used.

Now, the wrapping paper that Santa uses is different.  Santa's paper is multi-colored and fun, but not cheesy or childish.  Santa's paper is also top-secret.  When I was a kid, Santa used our paper to wrap gifts, which means that he must have spent a lot of time at our house.  He also put my mom and dad to work writing gift tags.  I told Santa that while I'm happy to bake cookies for him, he should probably ask our elf Crumpet to write the gift tags.