Have Yourself a Traditional Christmas with Jolly Time!

Do you follow me on Instagram?  Probably not, because I’m pretty new to Instagram, but you really should.  Because if you did, you would have seen the gorgeous (and real!) cranberry and popcorn garland that I’ve been working on for my Christmas tree.

When I was little, we always had a garland on our tree, but it was a tinsel garland.  I remember visiting my friend Lori’s house when I was around 8-10 years old and seeing her popcorn garland.  I was so jealous.  Her family even worked on it together all the way up until Christmas Eve before putting it on their tree, so it was a family project that finally came together right before they opened gifts.  Not only was it a really cool group effort, but the garland itself seemed so classic – I wanted one.  Unfortunately, my mother did not, so we stuck with the tinsel garland (I think she still uses the same one to this very day, true story).  Over the years, that popcorn garland at my friend Lori’s house kind of slipped my mind…until a few weeks ago.  Suddenly, with Christmas in the air and holiday preparations in my house underway, I was determined to make a popcorn garland – To implement this little part of “traditional Christmas” in my own home near the tropics.

Turns out, they’re a bit time consuming, but super easy to make.  All you need is a needle, thread, popcorn, and fresh packaged cranberries (these came from the great folks up at Habelman Brothers in Wisconsin).  I used Jollytime popcorn, because that’s what we normally eat, so I figured it would work well for this project.  To make your garland, pop the popcorn over the stove and then let it sit for at least a day.  I wanted to get started right away, but found that the popcorn was still to soft to be able to string it easily.  After one day I could easy put the needle in and thread it through.  Remember, this is a project that is done in sections.  I did mine in 1-2 yard sections leaving a little extra thread at the ends so the sections can be tied together when it’s completely finished.  I also would recommend looping the thread through the needle to where it is a double strand, if not your needle might come off the thread (that happened more than once in our case).  Because I have way more popcorn than cranberries, I decided to string 10 pieces of popcorn and then 1 cranberry, then 10 more pieces of popcorn and one cranberry, and so on…  Just make sure that you stick the popcorn and cranberry with the needle and not your fingers.  Ouch!  I say that from experience…unfortunately.

Although my garland isn’t quite done done yet, I have tried my completed garland strands on my tree several times, and I just love the way it looks.  While these garlands were originally used when there weren’t even lights to put on trees, I love the way my Christmas lights brings out the yellow of the popcorn and the red of the cranberries.  They really compliment each other.  Because my kids are too young to use a needle and a thread this year, I’m doing this one all on my own, but one day we’ll make this a family project – each working on our own strand, for them to finally be connected just before Christmas.

So far, my garland’s been really fun to make and I’m on track to be done just in time for Christmas Eve.  I can’t wait to put the entire thing on the tree.

But because I wanted to keep the girls involved (and Greenleigh’s always looking to do arts & crafts), I started looking around the internet for holiday crafts that they could do with popcorn.  Turns out there are a ton!  Like this beautiful popcorn wreath made out of a paper plate.  Greenleigh couldn’t do this on her own, but with a little help, this is a great project:And I’m sure even Greenleigh could help make some of this white chocolate popcorn (with sprinkes!):(You can find the recipe here)

Or maybe we could use some of the left over cranberries to make one of these bird feeders:And don’t forget – Popcorn makes a great gift!  Because who doesn’t love popcorn?  And this is such a cute and simple way to wrap it up.  Maybe Greenleigh could help me put something like this together for her teacher.

By the way you can get those mason jar tags by clicking on the image above!

For more popcorn recipes check out the Jolly Time website!
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.