Lego-Mania!

We LOVE Lego in our house. It's also one of the reasons I can usually be found with a pair of (clean, designated for house-use-only!) shoes on. Those things HURT when you step on them!!

Scott turned 9 in mid-March, but since it was Spring Break, I decided his party would have to happen later. Todd's party was right around his birthday, which is also right around Scott's birthday. In past years, we have combined the parties, and we may do something like that again in the future, but this year we did 2 separate parties, so I wanted them to be ss-pp-rr-ee-aa-dd out!!! Scott really wanted a Lego themed party, so I turned to the Internet and my brain for some inspiration and we had the party yesterday.

So... here are some of the fun things we came up with for Scott's LEGO birthday. The kids helped with some of the decorations, too.

The invitations:

Each invitation had a combination of blocks that added up to 9. I think planning a party is as much fun for me as it is for the kids to attend the party! I used a 3/4" circle punch for the bumps (not sure of the official Lego-lingo for the connector parts!) and the straight parts are 1" for each bump. A 1 block measures 1"X1", etc.

The Decorations:

Scott and Elise built some decorations out of our Megablocks and Duplo blocks. The kids don't play with these anymore, just the small Legos now, but we still had some around and they made for some fun party decorations! The link for the Lego men on the patio doors is listed below.

We opted for small bags of chips, and just had them in larger bowls on the table. Also, instead of making punch and having spills, we bought 2 cases of juice boxes from Costco. I have seen how some people wrap the juice boxes to look like big pieces of Lego. Loved that idea, but I knew we would be going through a lot of juice boxes since there were so many kids here, so I just set them on the table undecorated! For lunch we also served pizza. It was Costco pizza, but the kids were guessing all kinds of fancy places for where it came from! I guess they liked it! I think it tasted just as good as any "fancy" pizza place, anyway!!

Saw this soap dispenser idea on a couple blogs, and Pinterest, as well, I believe. So cute! The kids want to keep our soap like this all the time!

The Games:

Straw relay... Each kid got their own straw and had to suction on a piece of lego at one end of the table and keep it on there until the other side of the table! They were great at this. 

 

 

Same idea as the straws, only this relay was with chopsticks... proved to be much harder for them than the straws!

 

Lego Toss Game. (Todd is setting up the game here for me... I don't have a pic of the kids actually playing the game!) The kids stood behind a line and had to toss Lego pieces into different jars for points. WAY harder than it sounds! After 4 rounds, only 4 kids got on the board. It's a variation of the Lego Ring toss games I saw online, so maybe those games would be easier. Some of the kids wanted to keep going until they got on the board, but others were happy to move onto a different game.

Lego Pictionary... I divided the kids into 2 teams. Each team chose one person at a time to build a word I gave the 2 builders in secret, and then the rest of the team guessed. I'm not going to lie to you... it got pretty loud in there during the guessing portion of the game, but it was a riot, and I was so glad the kids got into as much as they did.

The cake:

This baby might not get me a job on Cake Boss, but the kids sure ate it up. I covered wafer cookies the night before in coloured icing and put on coordinating smarties. It's a chocolate cake in there... and the cupcakes are white cake because I knew there could be some kids who weren't chocolate lovers (so strange to me!!)

 

The day after the party I found the #9 candle that Scott wanted... oh well, we went with individual candles in a pinch. And I even had a couple sparklers to add to the excitement!

The decorations:

I wanted to make some Lego men heads as decoration, but as I was making them, I had the idea that the kids could decorate them. Then they chose a goodie bag and clothes pinned their Lego head onto their bag. This also helped them all remember to take a goodie bag at the end!

Tip: To get corners round using any circle punch, just slip the corner in from the top. 

The goodie bags:

Inside the goodie bags I put a chocolate Easter Bunny, Lego fun facts (link to these below - truly cool to learn about the life of a Lego block!) some Lego shaped candy, and a bag of chips.

Fun Fun Fun! The kids all had fun, and Steve and I had fun planning this party. I don't know how many more years Scott will want a party with a bunch of friends over. But I am glad he wanted to do it this year!

THANK YOU to everyone that made Scott's birthday extra special!

Some of the things pictured above were from other bloggers that I found during my party planning.... They have generously made their resources available for personal use, and I thank them for that, as well!

Lego Fun Facts sheets... Roots and Wings blog

Lego Guy for decorations... Winks and Daisies blog

Some super-cool Lego information... how it's made, etc.: How Stuff Works blog

Some more great info on Lego parties... Tip Junkie blog and HERE

Lego Kirigami tutorial: Zakka Life blog

Of course.... Pinterest and Google :)

And this next one is a resource I didn't actually use, but I sure think it would be handy for someone that wanted to have the whole party planned out for them... From Aussie Pumpkin Patch: Lego Party pdf. Just the title of it "pdf" makes it sound so complete, I think! It is a great resource, but I found it long after my planning was already well underway.