How much fun can you have with a loaf of bread, a bag of popcorn and some fresh cranberries ? Well, quite a lot actually ! When Hovis got in touch to say they'd be sending through a pack of goodies to create some Christmas decorations from bread with the Madhouse Mini-testers, my first instinct was to raise my eyebrows in disbelief. Wouldn't it go mouldy ? Well, apparently not, if you toast it first to remove most of the moisture. You could also varnish it or paint it but I'm actually quite intrigued to see how long toast takes to go mouldy - it's not that long until Christmas after all !
I wasn't convinced that we would manage to create something that looked good from bread, but we were all actually very impressed. It's a simple project for young children to get involved in, cutting Christmassy shapes out of toast with cookie cutters - and there's lots of nibbling of the leftover bits too so there's not even any tidying up at the end !
The only adult supervision needed is when using a needle to string the popcorn (lots of eating going on there too because they kept breaking !), fresh cranberries, candy canes and toast shapes onto a festive green ribbon. It looks really good (despite the odd star point and reindeer leg that fell off !) and Sophie has asked if she can put it in her room.
If you haven't got reindeer and star or other festive-shaped cookie cutters at hand, you might prefer the Merry Christmas banner project which requires cutting the letters of Merry Xmas out of toast then decorating them with icing and threading them on a ribbon. (Click on to the Hovis project sheets for bigger readable/printable versions.)
I'll be back in a few days with another couple of projects for fun Christmas decorations using bread.
Disclosure : I received a package of goodies from Hovis including bread, popcorn, cranberries and ribbon in order to make the decorations and blog about them.
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what a brilliant idea, cheap and easy, will be giving this ago with my son :)
ReplyDeletelooks like fun, yummy too
ReplyDeleteTiffany Oconnell
These look easy to make! Nice idea! xo
ReplyDeleteit looks really nice! bit of an odd idea but it works!
ReplyDeleteI am going to give this a go with the mindees - not sure how long they will last though as they have a habit of nibbling!!
ReplyDeletewhat fantastic ideas.. definately going to give them a go
ReplyDeletesounds fun
ReplyDeleteWhat a fabulous idea, this will certainly fill the days until christmas!
ReplyDeleteyour garland looks brilliant. This is a clever and simple idea and I'll definitely be trying it out with Piper and Daisy
ReplyDeleteI thought that this seemed a bit crazy but they look lovely. I can just imagine them in my country cottage kitchen, above the Aga (alas, this is just a dream...)
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I should try and do it with little man!
ReplyDeleteVery different, but it looks great.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like really good fun! I love the idea of anything home-made at Christmas rather than the overpriced over-packaged shop-bought stuff :)
ReplyDeletesome great ideas,I can't wait to try some with my bro's :D
ReplyDeletecertainly different
ReplyDelete