It's goodbye for now.

Dear lovely readers, 

I've put off writing this post for some time now, because, honestly, it's hard for me to write this. Nothing earth shattering. Just that I'm not going to be blogging here for awhile. Maybe not forever.

Love and Lollipops has been my little project. Something I did for myself and hoped that others like you, would enjoy what I shared. I started it when Little One, now aged six, was very young, and it was a lovely escape from being at home all day, changing diapers, breastfeeding. You know.

Along the way I've gotten to "meet" some of you via comments and emails and some of us have even become friends. I am so very grateful. Grateful to all of you, whether you read this to support me or because you enjoyed it. I want to say a heartfelt thank you. 

I'm not finished sharing playful and creative pursuits... and for now I have replaced this space with Instagram. If you click on this link : https://www.instagram.com/georgiasetzer/, you can see what I get up too there. Recently I've shared crafts and fun there, that I haven't shared here.

By the way you don't have to be an active Instagram user (post pictures) to be a follower of other's accounts, but you do have to join Instagram to follow along (I think).

I won't be on the Love and Lollipops Facebook page either. Taking a break there too.

Here's some Instagram fun that I've been up to:

 

Keep having fun with your kiddos! 

All the very best to you.

Georgia :)

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

Christmas Ornament Alphabet Game

 

Here's an easy and fun way to practice the alphabet.

Type out and cut up the letters of the alphabet. If you have an alphabet puzzle or any other alphabet toy, which has all the loose letters, that would work well too. 

Hide each letter with a Christmas ornament around your home. Then send your little person to look for all the ornaments. When they find the letter and the ornament, they must tell you what the letter is. You can extend this activity by asking them to shout out a word starting with that letter.

After they have found all the ornaments, they get to hang them on the tree. Simple and fun.

Hope you are enjoying this lovely time of year. Till next time. 

Christmas Cards 2014

 

 

I love the idea that we make our own cards. The boys aren't always as keen as I am. :)

This year we went for something more arty looking. 

Long time ago, we made our own Eric Carle style paper. To see what I mean, you can read this post. There was still lots left over over in the craft cupboard and it came in very handy for the idea I had.

    So to make these, we used our own handmade paper. We cut out the background scene and the trees. We then used a punch (Little One loved doing this) to make the decorations and the snow. We had a small production line going on the dining room table, with each of us doing a different "job". 

I love how they turned out. 

Till next time, enjoy this wonderful season. 

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.

Making Art for your Child's Room

It's been almost a year since we moved to Pretoria, but I wanted to share this post with you, as old as it is. Before moving out of our home last year, I did many things to fix up the house. One of those chores was to finalise a nice wall of art in Little One's room. His room was definitely one of my favourites in the house. The light in this room was beautiful and of course, who can resist children's decor?

So using the art work from free printable packs, provided by the wonderful blogs Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1, as well as some other ideas, I made all the art for the wall myself.

  

One very easy idea is to cut out the first letter of your child's name from black craft paper and then using Tipp-Ex or white paint, turn it into a road. Stick on some toy cars, preferably plastic ones if you can find them, with a nice strong glue. I used light plastic cars from a popular old game. I took the glass out of the frame, so that I could stick the cars directly onto the cardboard. The poster next to the "S", as well as the two yellow framed pictures, were made from the art work in the printable packs, as mentioned above.

In this picture below you can see how I created the Bus and Taxi. Adding photo faces of our family members made it fun and personal. 

I love how it turned out and Little One and I spent some great creative time sitting at that little white table.

I also love that it didn't cost lots of money to make a great wall of art. 

Do you have some personal walls of art in your home?


PS. Here's a link to all the other posts I've written about homemade wall art - Wall Art Ideas. Just in case you like the topic. :)

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.

C is for Car

Earlier this year I kind of promised you an alphabet series. One should never promise such things. The year has raced on and Little One will be going into his last term of the school year tomorrow. The spring holidays are over, sniff, sniff. On the upside, it's count down to the Christmas holidays. 

I have shared these in the series so far:

A is for Astronaut

O is for Octopus

S is for The Very Busy Spider

I'm not very far, am I.  

Let's see if I can catch up a bit.

Little One won an awesome prize at his school carnival and this week we went down to the Zwartkops Race Track and both boys got the opportunity to race around the track with racing driver George Smallberger. It was such a cool afternoon.

Perfect timing for this post. So here I share not only our car activities, but also some pictures of our afternoon.

This cute letter "c" idea is from this post.

These are inspired by these Teddy Racing Cars. 

(I used small Bar Ones, Smarties and some icing.)

A chocolate traffic light treat, or robot, as we call them here in South Africa. 

(Kit Kat, small Bar Ones, Smarties and icing.)

Both my boys (aged 6 and 12) loved creating this car banner for the bookshelf.

If you children love drawing, creating a banner is a great boredom buster.

 

Little One in the car, all ready to go. 

  

Those little fingers make me smile. 

 Can you spot him?

Another alphabet post coming up soon. 

Till next time. 

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.