Lego Party

I had so much fun preparing for our son's birthday party this year.  He chose a LEGO theme, which I thought would be a super easy theme to incorporate, even for an extreme left-brained mother who has arts-and-crafts-a-phobia (we're talking cold sweats and heebie-jeebies during every MOPS craft session level fear).  Primary colors and basic shapes (rectangles and circles) can't be too difficult, can it? 

The LEGO birthday party kit from the LEGO store made the party preparations even easier.  We used old LEGO bricks from around the house to assemble a utensil holder and to make centerpieces.  I ordered five pounds of LEGO shaped candy online to used as prizes.  This candy is awesome.  Kids can eat it or use it to build masterpieces.  Favors included more LEGO candy and small LEGO kits with assembly cards.  Each guest signed a huge pop-up birthday card for our son when they arrived and received cute keepsake plastic name tags.  While I worked on a few birthday banners...

... my kids wanted to help with one of the table cloths.  They used a stamping pad and old LEGO bricks to stamp LEGO prints all over the table cloth.  I spray-painted some bubble wrap green to make the table runner look like a LEGO assembly board.

When my husband bought the LEGO Millennium Falcon kit as our boy's birthday gift, he was eagerly looking forward to helping our boy assemble all 1254 pieces. However, when my husband returned from an overnight camping trip with our daughter the following day, our birthday boy had already completed almost all of it. So, we used it as a centerpiece. (Lower right photo in scrapbook page shown above).



We usually outsource the cake baking and decorating to some extremely talented friends of ours.  However, they have been so busy traveling and working multiple jobs that we did not want to impose upon them for this party, so we attempted to build a Lego brick cake ourselves.  It was a disaster.  I had hoped my mini-loaf pan would make nice even rectangular bricks.  Every brick was a different size despite my precise measuring of batter, and some did not come out of the pan very well.  In a rush, we used standard cake icing instead of fondant or the cake decorating icing found in arts and crafts stores.  The bricks slid all around and fell apart.  My husband tried to build the number six out of my disfigured bricks, and he did the best he could with what I gave him.  At least the cake tasted delicious.  I also offered Lego cupcakes as an alternative.  When I pulled out some waffle cone bowls and ice cream to go with the cake, the boys were thrilled, and all cake aesthetic issues were immediately forgiven.
 

Some of the party games and activities included:

1. LEGO pit free assembly time & building contests
2. Guess how many LEGO bricks are in the jar.  The closest guess was 130.
3. A LEGO robot game my husband spent the week programming using his LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit.
4. Folding balloons into swords and having sword fights (unplanned spontaneous activity)
5. Staring contests (also unplanned)
6. Sticking balloons on each boy's head to see who had the most static electricity (yet another unplanned activity the boys initiated)
7. Outdoor play which included basketball, football, and backyard playground fun (our desperate last minute attempt to help the boys burn off all that energy that could not be contained despite all their running up and down all three staircases and through every room in the house)

He received lots of awesome LEGO kits and even a LEGO planetarium as birthday gifts.  Happy birthday, my little LEGO master.  We love you!