Bottle Top Snowmen Creativity

I have an idea in my head when I start a project. My boys have their own ideas! I love that. Yes, it does mean that my craft ideas don't always come to fruition, but I choose to see my ideas as "prompts" for their wonderful creativity. 

So when I glued these bottle tops together, I envisioned bottle top snowmen ornaments, like you see in the photo at the top. Yip, that's my attempt. (I used a glue gun to glue these tops together by the way.)

But, when my boys saw bottle top snowmen, they saw this...

 

 

and this... Little One's creation below. Little One often takes the lead from big brother. :)

This activity kept them busy for more than an hour. A great success in my book. I'm sure you love your kiddos' ideas too... have they ever "bettered" your idea? 

This will be my last post for the year. We will be returning to my home town for Christmas and the New Year. I do wish you a blessed and beautiful Christmas time with your families and friends. If you are traveling, be safe. Take care, till next time.

Georgia x

Design your own T-Shirt

I had seen this idea in our local ideas magazine and have always wanted to try it.

I found a fairly easy and cool picture to copy, a Star Wars Clone Trooper, via the  Coloring Pages for Kids website and printed it out. I used an inexpensive white T-shirt and a fabric marker/pen,
which is available at most craft stores. 

A white T-shirt is the best way to go if you are going to trace a design and not do it free-hand. Remember to place a thick piece of cardboard into the T-shirt and underneath the picture you are copying, otherwise the pen will go right through and make marks on the back of the T. You also need a fairly steady hand and good light.

Little One likes it!

If you are wanting more inspiration, I'm posting almost daily on Instagram. I would love for you to follow along.
http://instagram.com/loveandlollipops/

Till next time.

U is for Umbrella

Another in my "I'm-very-behind" alphabet series.

In South Africa our children learn the phonetic pronounciation of a letter, so "u" as in "umbrella", not "u" as in "unicorn". 

  At the blog 3 dinosaurs you can download some super alphabet printable packs. I used this great picture of an umbrella to do our first craft. Little One had to decorate the umbrella with fingerprints. 

(The link to this printable is not working at the moment. I will try to fix it.)

This cute umbrella cupcake idea comes from a Woman's Value magazine party supplement, April 2004. In their version, they used blue and cream icing (half/half) to represent the sand and the beach. I went the easy route - my cupcakes came from Pick n Pay. :)

"If all the raindrops were Smarties and Jelly Tots, Oh what a rain that would be! "

Using bendy straws and paper cupcake liners, Little One created some cute umbrellas. And the rain... well that was Smarties and Jelly Tots of course.

As you can tell in that last picture, the sweetie rain went down a treat. You think he may have some in his mouth? :)

Till next time, have fun.

Ten Super Bottle Top Crafts

My passion for bottle tops has been a longstanding one (sounds a bit weird I know), but somehow on this blogging journey, I was introduced to the concept of these being a creative tool and I was changed. I could never throw them away again. In fact, when we relocated up country earlier this year, my husband had to convince me that I could not allocate precious moving boxes to my collection (my big collection) of recycling. Bottle tops, milk bottles, egg cartons - I keep these!  Hehe, okay, perhaps I am a bit strange. Please don't unsubscribe. :)

Today's post is a little trip down memory lane, sharing some of my favourite bottle top creations from the past few years with you and a new one! 

1. I think my very first inspiration for bottle top crafts came via the lovely Silly Eagle Books blog. Vanessa created some wonderful bottle top animals. Pop on over to this post (Bottle Top Animals) to also see a caterpillar, dog, cat, bird, bunny and spider.

2. A pretty "you are the apple of my eye" card. 

 

3. More wonderful inspiration came from the very creative Amanda from Crafts by Amanda. I loved and made her bottle top ladybirds and ladybird jar. (Bottle Top Ladybirds and Jar)

4. I enjoyed making these bats with Little One. They were a great fine motor activity too. They looked spooky and cool when put up on his cupboard door. (Bottle Top Bats)

5. Bottle tops and stickers make for great stamps. Add play dough and you have a fun activity for a little one. And a cute gift! You could also use these to do some printing of course. (Bottle Top Stamps)

6. Bottle tops, glue and sequence make for some fun easy art. 
(Bottle Top Art)

  7. Who doesn't like Dr. Seuss? This bottle top town was Seuss-inspired. (Seussville Bottle Top Town)

8. A fun Christmas Craft... 82 days and counting down... bottle top snowmen. (Bottle Top Snowmen)

9. Here's a great craft to do at a girl's birthday party. Make some designer miniature cakes using bottle tops,  play dough and pretty beads. (Designer Bottle Top Cakes)

  10. And last, but not least, a new bottle top craft for you, croaked up recently and not shared before. I give you... Bottle Top Frogs! Easy to make, by simply adding pom poms and googly eyes to bottle tops (the star of this show).  

My all time favourite bottle top picture must be the one at the top of this post.  Those were bottle top cards I made some time back for a children's home party. 

PS. And that's not all folks! If you click on the "Bottle Tops" tag in the sidebar of the blog, you will find even more cute bottle top crafts. (yes, more I tell you!)

Till next time. 

14 of the best Shaving Cream activities ever!

I cream, You cream, We all love Shaving cream! 

(sorry, couldn't help myself) :)

What can you get up to with Shaving cream? Well, it's definitely more than just for shaving. Before writing this post,  I had not let my kids play enough with this stuff , so after finding two big cans for under R35 at Discem Pharmacy, I grabbed them (with a smile) and came home ready for some shaving cream fun. And you get the benefit of me having scoured the web for the best ideas and sharing some of them here.

But first off, here's a couple of quick and easy activities we got up to.

1. Shaving cream and paint play. I gave Little One a brush and water and told him to wet the water colours and to mix it into the shaving cream. He loved it! You could use tempera or acrylic paints too.

2. Shaving cream, toy cars and a spray bottle of water to wash them off. The full post is here. We did this back in 2012. (If I had a little girl, I'd still do this, but substitute the cars for small plastic bath toys or dolls perhaps?)

3. Earlier this year we made shaving cream puffy paint to create a lunar landscape. The full post is here.

4. Ocean in a bag. I saw this neat idea over at Pink and Green Mama and adapted it a bit. Take a big zip lock bag, fill it with shaving cream, some blue food colouring and add some sea-themed stickers. Seal the bag and let your kiddo explore. I loved how the shaving cream in the bag felt... I couldn't help but play with it too. I think this is a great activity for a younger child and if you added different colours, you would get a lovely rainbow effect. We'll try that next time.

5. Shaving cream in the bath is a blast. I purchased a nice old-fashioned razor (no blade) from Checkers and Little One shaved just like Dad - I loved his expressions.

We are lucky enough to have a mirror running the length of the bath, so Little One can smear shaving cream all over and use it as a canvas to draw and do letter practice. If you don't have a mirror, smearing it onto the bath sides can work just as well.

6. Shaving Cream Desert. Another great bath activity, although no bath required. Provide silicone cup cake holders, shaving cream and sparkly beads and some spoons. Let the fun begin. (Honestly, not a hit with my Little One, but I think that little girls would love this.)

Here are some other wonderful ideas I haven't tried - yet!

Shaving Cream Painting (Mom it Forward)

Shaving Cream Balloons - you read right! (Aluminum Foiled)

Erupting Sensory Shaving Cream Snow (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Shimmery Shaving Cream Paint Recipe (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Shaving Cream Dough (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Make Indoor Snowmen (Modern Parents Messy Kids)
Teaching spreading skills with shaving-cream and foam blocks (Happy Hooligans)

And last, but not least, Shaving Cream Bath Paint (Meet the Dubiens). This last idea looks fantastic and I'm dying to try it, BUT I'm not brave enough to use food colours in the bath. What if it stains? Those who've tried it, claim it doesn't and perhaps it depends on what type of food colouring you use. Of course you can purchase coloured shaving foam, so that's perhaps the "safer" alternative.

And if after all this, you are actually really worried about letting your kiddos play with shaving cream, here's the infamous shaving cream article (a lengthy read). 

I know this goes without saying, but Shaving Cream should not be eaten, so please don't leave your very little person alone with it. 

Till next time, have some super shaving cream fun! 

Please come back and tell me what you got up to.

Fun with Dinosaurs {A Dinosaur Tea Party}

(Source: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia, Volume 3) 

(Whoops! In the last post I shared a lot of photographs of the Small Dinosaur World we made, but forgot to put in the most important photo - the one showing the whole small world, in it's entirety. I've gone back and added it in, if you want to go and check it out.) 

To bring this awesome theme to a close, what could be better than a dinosaur tea party with real yummy fossil dinosaur cookies.

The recipe I used is for roll-into-balls-and-squash-down-with-a-fork-cookies. The original recipe called for brown sugar, but as I didn't have any, I  used white sugar instead.

Basic recipe

225 grams / 1/2 lb. butter

125ml. / 1/2 a cup of sugar (white or brown)

1 egg yolk

500ml. / 2 cups of flour (I used cake flour)

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolk and beat further. Fold in the flour and then using your hands knead into a dough. The texture is quite crumbly, but keep kneading until you have a nice dough. Roll the dough into small balls about 1.5/2cm across in size. Use a fork to flatten them or invite in a friendly dinosaur to stomp on them for you. :)

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 8 to 10 minutes.

These cookies are better the day after I think. They become more crunchy.

Adapted Gluten free/Casein free Cookies

225 grams / 1/2 lb.dairy free margarine (I used Blossom Light)

125ml. / 1/2 a cup of sugar (white or brown)

1 egg yolk

625ml. / 2 and a half cups of flour (I used Glutagon GF Cake flour)

The texture of this dough is very different to the basic recipe. It is not crumbly at all; rather quite sticky, which is why I added the extra flour. My oldest, the eater of these, gave them a big thumbs up. This is definitely one of the better GF/CF  biscuits I've made over the years. 

We needed a special serving plate for our dinosaur cookies, so using this amazing inspiration from Three Little Monkey's Studio blog, I made this T-Rex dish from a paper plate. It's an easy alternative to the melamine plate that Gretchen used.

To end off all the dinosaur fun, here are three really nice dinosaur links:

Some more DIY dinosaur eggs (these are so cool)

DIY plastic dinosaur bookends

A girl's dino birthday party (with free printables)

If you are a South African reader, I do hope you enjoy these last few days of Winter holidays.

Till next time.

PS. Sharing this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op. 

Fun with Dinosaurs {Dinosaur Diorama}

 

I'm having so much fun with this theme that I'm stretching the activities into week two of our holidays. I cannot believe the first week is over... it went way too fast :(

I decided that we definitely needed to make a dinosaur diorama. I saw this really great idea over at Made by Joel (a great Dad Blogger) and knew it would be perfect for our project. 

So we got a shoebox and Big One was put in charge of colouring the scenery. He did this on paper first, which we cut to fit perfectly inside the box. Little One drew some additions to the diorama that we placed inside and around the box. This included an "active volcano" (as he put it) and some palm trees with coconuts on. My job was to stick the dinosaur stickers onto light cardstock and then cut them out. I used the paper clips to make them stand (as you can see in the picture below). This is actually a great cutting activity for the kiddos, except I can rarely get Little One to cut anything out. 

The book we used for all our stickers is called Let's Decorate Dinosaur Stickers. There are plenty of stickers in this book and I highly recommend getting it or something similar if you like this project. It's certainly easier than finding and printing pictures from the internet.

Some more dinosaur fun is still coming up. I do hope that you have enjoyed the activities we have done so far.

Just by the way... are there any themes you would love to see explored here at Love and Lollipops? I'm always open to suggestions. Drop me an email at  gsetzer(at)mweb(dot)co(dot)za or leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Till next time. 

PS. Sharing this at the wonderful Weekly Kids Co-Op.

Fun with Dinosaurs {Dinosaur Fossil Pasta Pictures}

I quite like a theme. Okay. That's an understatement. :) It's been awhile since we've had a theme over here.

It's also three weeks Winter holidays. Whoohoo! Great time for a theme or two.

Dinosaurs. I've wanted to have some dinosaur fun for f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

I don't have dinosaur boys just btw. I have boys who love lego and vehicles and characters, but dinosaurs - no biggie. However I figured, that if I present them with the activities, they'll bite. So we made these. So easy and Little One loved it. In fact he said: "This is the best day." :) That made me happy.

I found some fossil pictures over at this cool site and used them to help me draw/glue dinosaur outlines that actually looked like dinosaurs. I glued the outline and all over, in between, so that Little One could simply fill in all the bones/pasta. As simple as that... Dinosaur Fossil Pasta Pictures.

I have challenged myself to read at least three books a day to Little One, every day of the holidays. This week we have read all our dinosaur books, to get him in a real dinosaur mood. 

Some of the books we have read are:

If the Dinosaurs came back - Bernard Most

How do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?  - Jane Yolen

Dinosaur Dig! - Penny Dale 

Do you have any favourite dinosaur books?

More dinosaur fun coming up. :)

PS. Big One called his a "Noodlesaurus". :) And, we are sharing this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op.