For Love of Legos: Livin' the Party Life!

My son turned 6 this week. The only gifts he now asks for are legos and percussive instruments. That's it. And you can imagine that being an only grandchild and only nephew on both sides, that he tends to get what he asks for. This year, to round out the fully lego-centric year we had, he wanted a lego birthday party. I, in my delusional clinging to an increasingly elusive free schedule, obliged, meaning that I probably spent way too many hours working on creative plans to make a great event.

As a disclaimer, most of the following pictures are not necessarily completely original ideas. The internet is replete with wonderful examples of lego parties. I added my own fun spin to a few things. Mostly, it was a blast to put things together with him and to enjoy watching him share his love of legos with friends from school, church and soccer!  I decided to post this just in case any of you who have kids who are similarly obsessed might enjoy a little (very inexpensively done) inspiration! Enjoy!

The Invitation (With location specifics blurred out!)

The Invitation: I found a lego font online (legothick), discovered a legobrick background on a google image search, added the specifics and "voila!" I just addressed the other side and mailed them as postcards.

The Welcome: We had to welcome the kids to legoland! I confused one poor parent who thought that there must be a place called Legoland in Durham and tried to Mapquest it, but for the most part, it was just a clever way to describe the location.

Welcome to Legoland!

Then, of course, we had to plan for the food. I am never, nor have I claimed to be, all that into cooking. The idea of coming up with clever, lego-themed foods and actually being able to create them was a tad overwhelming. Thankfully, there were a lot of great ideas on the internet. We decided to make Lego cakes, Lego Chocolate bricks and Lego Pops.

 The lego pops: They are quite simply one large marshallow and one small one stuck together with yellow candy. Then you spread the whole thing with more yellow candy, let it harden and draw on the faces. I wrapped a piece of floral foam with tissue paper and made a label with my fun lego font and there you go.

 The choco bricks: I found a plastic mold for $1.27 on amazon and melted chocolate chips to make my own little lego shaped chocolates. Cost almost nothing. Again, made fun little labels and wrapped them up. These were in our favor bags.

The cake: I made a 9 x 13 sheet cake and shaved off the dome after cooling. Used some gel coloring to make red, yellow and blue frosting. Cut large marshmallows in half to make the dots on the "brick" and then iced the whole thing. There were two long bricks and two square bricks. The kids loved getting to choose which color lego brick they could eat!



Minifigure Head Cookie Decorating:

Decorating Cookie Heads

I made sugar cookies in the shape of lego minifigure heads. We set out a bunch of bowls of frosting and candy as well as some gel writers and let the kids have fun making their minifigure faces.

The Clues!

Putting together their cars!

The Scavenger Hunt: I broke the kids up into three teams- Blue, Red and Yellow. Good solid lego colors, of course. I came up with clues that would lead them to little bags of legos. Their final clue came with instructions on how to put their legos together into little cars. Each team had to find all their clues and then race to put together their cars. It was fun to see their brains work to find the clues, looking under tables and climbing in the backyard and then to work together following instructions to put them together. I think it was definitely a success!

Looking for clues!

Indoor Game: Anyone up for "Build-a-Minifigure? These kids were!  I just used card stock and came up with 10 different body parts to pin up. Like the traditional pin games, they were blindfolded and got to try to put the pieces up on a white piece of cardstock on the wall!

Kids Working Hard!

Our Completed Minifigure!

 And, of course, the Goody Bags! Josh had a lot of fun tracing the circles and helping me tape them to the bags. I found a pack of these cute little bags at 5 Below, made up some nametags with my favorite new font, filled them with the choco-bricks, some lego coloring pages, a lollipop and we added their minifigure cookies, nicely wrapped, to take home with them.

Overall, I think the kids had a great time. Apparently, today in Sunday school, my son offered up a prayer of thanks that his mom and dad gave him a lego party. So, we feel pretty confident he enjoyed himself!

Here's to legos, the most amazing toy in the world and the first and last thing my son wants to do every day of his life.