Five-minute festive crafting : Plastic bottle snowman.

We're on holiday at last, which means it's time to partake in numerous festive-themed baking and crafting projects that I've been promising the kids before heading off to visit the family on both sides of the Channel for a few days. We have a pretty well-stocked crafts cupboard here at The Madhouse, but I always like to use things out of the recycling box too, so you should be able to make most of our crafts projects with odds and ends that are already lying around the house. It's usually time that is in short supply though, so I've got lots of nifty ideas for crafts that will only take a few minutes - perfect for when you have a million things to do but the kids need entertaining ! 

In this case, the main item required was a milk bottle that I'd just rinsed out for recycling. As it was white, it immediately made me think of a snowman so I told Pierre to cut out and stick on a circle of white paper as a head. 

A quick rummage through the crafts box revealed a stash of white cotton wool balls so I gave them to Pierre, along with some white glue, and told him to stick them all over the bottle.

At this point, the timer on the oven dinged so I headed off to the kitchen and left him to get on with it.

Five minutes later, he came running out to show off his new frosty friend. I think he did a fabulous job, using coloured pom poms as buttons, a petal-shaped felt scrap as a nose and drawing eyes and a mouth on the paper face. A shiny star made a quirky alternative to a hat.

If you want some more ideas for festive fun, have a look at my roundup of simple Christmas crafts to do with the kids this weekend.