Lego Party

THEME:
My son is a HUGE Lego fanatic.  Our whole family is actually - probably me most of all!  So the LEGO theme party was one we have been thinking of for years.  With the release of the LEGO MOVIE this year, it was sure to be AWESOME!  A huge bonus is that there are TONS of Lego-themed birthday parties out there for inspiration.  I used many of them for my son's party.  I'll include the links below with whatever I can, but take a peek at my LEGO board on Pinterest for even more ideas - or simply do a search.  One of the biggest problems I found with many of the other Lego Party ideas was that they were planned for much younger kids.  My son was turning 11, and didn't want "baby games".  :)

INVITATIONS:

We used a pre-designed freebie from this website for the invitation with the font IMPACT for the words.  It's adorable, free, and fit well with the "building" theme that we had planned for the party.  We got them printed as 4x6 photos.

DECORATIONS:
My daughter worked at a movie theater and got a LEGO MOVIE poster that we had framed for Evan.  It will go in his new Lego-themed bedroom, but we used it as decor for the party first.

Top right-clockwise: Giant Lego boxes wrapped with colored butcher paper. Pin the Head on the Lego Man board. Framed Lego Movie poster. Small Lego boxes and Lego Valentine's box.

Thanks to my AWESOME friend who had just had a Lego party for her son, I didn't make ANY of this decor!!  She had wrapped large boxes with colored butcher paper that we propped against the wall at one end of the dining room.  I don't know how long it took her to put all of those circles onto the green poster board with foam dots!  Really, that is something not even I would do ;)  But is super cute for a PIN THE HEAD ON THE LEGO MAN GAME.  She had also made about 10 heads to use, but my son thought this game was too young for his party, so we used it as a decoration instead.  For the food table I used my son's locker shelf to support the LEGO VALENTINE'S BOX that we made in this post out of a Red Vines licorice container.  She also made about 15 of the small Lego blocks out of Capri-Sun boxes.  We stacked them all around the food table.  After this party we used all of these decorations at my work for a party and then to a friend for parties for her two sons.  So they've been used for 5 parties and counting!!  Her hard work is MUCH appreciated!  Oh, and did you notice the Tt?  Only REAL Lego fans will understand.

MUSIC:
The LEGO MOVIE soundtrack of course!  I downloaded it off Amazon which is quick and easy. And I think you get 4 different versions of the EVERYTHING IS AWESOME song!!!  Just what you wanted - right?  Well, these boys wanted to hear the full version of the BATMAN song - and yes, it's on there.

ACTIVITIES:
This is where we struggled to find games appealing to 11 year-olds.  But what we came up with was SUPER FUN!

Guess How Many Legos:
Each boy got to put his name and #guess on a paper.  At the end when we gave out the awards we gave the ESTIMATOR AWARD to the boy with the closest guess.

Lego People Race:
This game, as far as I know, is my original idea, and it turned out really well.The prep for this game was really fun for my son.  I had him build 50 Lego people with random hair, clothing, accessories.  Anything he wanted to build, any character. Yes, 50!  We have a lot of Legos so this wasn't a problem.  But if you didn't have that many, you could build simple objects also and play the game the same way.

My daughter took individual photos of each of them, then we pulled them all apart.  We didn't remove hands and arms - that's just cruel.  I took the photos and printed out 9/page like this on thick photo paper.

Lego People Race game cards. No Printable here. You have to make your own to match your Legos!

Then we cut them apart to make game cards.  I had my son decide how many points each character was worth depending on how many accessories they had, or things like how detailed their clothing was.  I didn't take the time to print them on the cards, we just wrote the points in the upper corner with a Sharpie pen.  They varied from 2 to 5 points.  I handed each boy a card face down and on my count they turned their card over and started assembling.  As soon as they completed one person they could move on to the next until all the cards were taken.

It was a mad grab for parts to assemble their Lego people.

Construction Games:
We filled Lego Grab Bags full of random Legos for each boy.  After picking one they got a large plate to keep them on and we started a series of timed individual building activities.  They got to use the people they built in the previous game as part of their building parts.

The Lego grab bags to build with.

They were given an object to build and about 3 minutes to do each one using only the Legos from their bag.  We did BEST HOUSE, TALLEST TOWER, and LONGEST BRIDGE.

The boys showing off their bridge building skills.

Working on their "Amusement Parks" for the group build.

Then they were paired in two teams for some group scene building on a base plate.  The first challenge was to build an AMUSEMENT PARK and describe it to me, and after mixing up teams a little, the next scene was to build a CASTLE.  The boys got about 7 minutes to start with, but kept asking for more time so I think on each one we spent around 12 minutes.

The last construction game we did was a ROCKET SHIP.  But after each boy had about 1 minute to start building, then they had to pass it to the left, build on the next one, and pass it after about 30 seconds.  The boys got really goofy with this one, so they were very interesting rockets, but they had a great time.

Memory Game:
We had also prepared a base plate with 20 random Legos with distinct names on it for a MEMORY GAME, but we had it hidden in the other room so they wouldn't see it - so we forgot about it!  Oh well.  But they would have had 1 minute to study the Legos, then have to write down as many items as they could remember.

FOOD:
Square pizza with pepperoni (that didn't quite look like the photo on the website - shocker!), colored Jello in cups, juice boxes, and a fruit tray.  The juice boxes were made from a printable I found here.

CUPCAKES:
My friend loaned me her Building Bricks and Minifigure silicon molds to make the Legos and Lego men for these cupcakes.  I had never done melting chocolate before - and it was pretty fun!  In some ways easy, but a little tricky to get precise.  My best tool to fill in details was a plastic chopstick!  And even though I pushed chocolate down into each Lego bump, they still didn't come out perfect.  But were still super cute!  The faces were drawn with Wilton Edible Markers.

FAVORS:
As the boys played the construction games I wrote down who I was going to give what award to.  The awards were bags of freezer pops, candy bars and Lego pencil sharpeners that I got from Dollar Tree.  The awards we gave were for ESTIMATOR, DESIGN, SPEED, CREATIVITY, RESOURCEFUL, ENGINEER, ARCHITECT, STRUCTURAL, and CARPENTER.  But you could come up with whatever fit your party.  The fonts I used for the tags were called Lego Thick, and Lego Brix - both downloaded online for free.

We also gave them a bag of block candies that I bought in the bulk candy section of WinCo grocery store, or you can find them on Amazon here.

The Lego Movie wasn't released on DVD yet when we had my son's party, or we would have made it a little longer and watched the movie at the end.  The boys had a great time, and my son thought EVERYTHING WAS AWESOME!

Lego Star Wars Party

THEME:
I was working on another theme for Noah this year, but then I saw an ad for End Zone stating that they did birthday parties, so I had to go check it out. I had never even been in the store before, but what a surprise! It's pure male paradise. Plus I loved it because I love playing board games, and they have every game you've ever heard of, and every one you haven't.

When I saw the video game party room, I knew this was the place for Noah's party. All of his friends are as big of fans of video games as Noah, so it was sure to please. And I thought the cost was very reasonable for 3 hours of fun, and not having to put 12 boys in my house!

INVITATIONS:
I'm really proud of these because I think they turned out so cute! I did a Google search for Lego Star Wars and found this cute picture in high quality. It had the "Lego Star Wars The Video Game" on it so I simply added "Birthday Party!" underneath that in Photoshop Elements. Then I typed the lower text, skewed it, added the yellow border, and sized it to print out as a 4"x6" photo. Then I just uploaded them, and picked up my prints a few hours later. I got help on the wording from some of the ideas on Birthday Party Ideas.

Back:
I did the backs in Microsoft Publisher, printed them out, cut them to the same size as the photos, and glued them together. I added a business card from End Zone at the bottom.
ACTIVITIES:
VIDEO GAMES! 6 big screen TV's, 3 with Lego Star Wars (my personal favorite), 1 with Lego Batman, 1 with Lego Indiana Jones, and 1 with another game on it (don't remember what it was) that had a bunch of mini-games.

The kids were SO excited to get into the room and start playing. I tried to make sure they got a chance to switch games if they wanted to, and tried to have Noah play with all of his guests at some point during the party. I used my 14 year-old son Logan as a fill-in when someone needed a partner to play with or help on a game. The owner's son was also in there to make sure everything was working right and to help the kids if they got stuck on part of a level.

FOOD:
Pizza, and green Gatorade bottles that we called "Yoda Soda". Then we had cupcakes and ice cream cups. I have never seen kids eat so fast in my life! As soon as they were done and washed their hands they could head back in to play again.

It was a fun setting to eat in the Lego room of the store. The boys had a good time pointing out to each other what sets they owned.

I brought the blue and green table cloths to put over theirs, so all we had to do was pile up the pizza boxes, gather the table cloths up with everything in them, and shove them in a garbage bag, and we were good to go.

FAVORS:
Because of the cost of this party, I didn't do a whole lot for the treat bags. I made the little topper for the baggies and put in colorful Twizzlers (I thought they looked like light sabers) and Starburst candies.

CAKE:
On Noah's actual birthday, I made this sad looking Lego cake. I used cupcakes on the top, and it would have been easier if I could have frozen them first, decorated them off the cake, then placed them on. I think using Ding Dongs instead might have worked better also. But, I was in a hurry, and Noah liked it, so, oh well. (And thanks to Photoshop it looks much better than it did in real life ;0)

It was a very fun party, and you can't beat not having to clean up anything. But my only problem may be that he will want to go there every year from now on, and I just don't think I could handle repeating a theme - what would I blog?