N2's Lego Party Part 1

This year I thought we might need to have 2 birthday parties with friends because they each wanted a different theme and different friends.  But after taking a look at their lists we decided we could have one larger friends party.  I really wanted to do the same theme if we were doing 1 party so I convinced them that a Lego party would be fun.  Luckily they agreed with me.  I'm not sure how much longer I can convince them that my ideas are good ideas!  Since our friends' party was going to be bigger, we decided to have a family party a different weekend and play all the same games with the cousins rather than invite the cousins to the friends' party.  I think it worked out well.  I was able to try out all the games/activities with having lots of adults there to help out if need be and I could figure out how much time things would take.  This post will have all the set up beforehand pictures.

Invitations
In making the invitations I just used regular cardstock and punched circles out (they were less than 1 inch) and attached them to the front with foam tape to make them stand up a little.  I printed the inside on white using red, yellow, green and blue writing.  I actually had a hard time with the blue and green cardstock.  Believe it or not I did not have these colors in my stash.  I did end up finding some textured cardstock to use.

Decorations
Decorations were easy because I just used cardstock pieces with circles and foam tape to represent Lego blocks.  I bought a circle punch for this-it was a one inch size.  I also bought some blue and green cardstock so I had primary colors.  I set up a banner on our front closet, lego pieces on the stairs and pieces hanging from our light fixture in the dining room.

I also made a Lego minifigure head out of a pretzel container from Costco.  I spray painted it yellow (perhaps I should have done this when the weather was nicer-my paint puckered when I tried to fix up some spots.  I had the paint nice and smooth but I missed a spot so I decided to go over those areas a different day and it was too cold).  I used a black foam sticker sheet to cut out the face.  The Lego figure had a dress up hat on him when I took the picture.  I think it's cute!

I just used solid colored plates and napkins in the same colors as the Legos-blue, red, yellow and green.  I was going to wrap juice boxes with cardstock and put circles on them to make them look like a Lego brick with 2 studs but Brian bought Capri Sun instead of juice boxes.  One less thing for me to do.

For the door decoration, I made a 6 out of Legos on one of their flat Lego mats and hung it with ribbon on the door.

Favors
I bought a small gift bag set at Michaels and used the circle punch to add studs to the bags.  Inside the goody bag I made lego shaped crayons using a mold that my sister-in-law Lisa had.  I also used candy melts and another mold that Lisa had to make Lego candy.  I made Lego heart necklaces for the girls (Natalie LOVES wearing hers) and Lego magnets for the boys.  We also had N2 design cars with various Lego pieces and then we purchased the pieces from Bricklink and made up Lego kits for all the kids.  We used those Lego pieces during the party.  I downloaded the Lego font and printed up tags for the candy, crayons and cars on labels and stuck them to bags.  I also printed up directions for making each of N2's cars and included those in the goody bags.

I have a suggestion for making the car kits.  Don't let your kids design the car first and then go searching for pieces.  That's what we did.  I took a whole day trying to find those pieces on Bricklink and trying to get them the cheapest I could. Then once I got the orders I had to count to make sure they were correct (which the majority were not) and contact the seller to get the order fixed.  Then I had to sort them out into bags.  If you aren't familiar with Bricklink, individual sellers post their items and you can search for pieces.  Since they are all individual sellers, you have to pay shipping to each seller.  I ended up ordering from about 6-7 different sellers so I had to pay shipping charges 6-7 times.

What I would suggest is go to a Lego store, if you have one by you, take a look at what they have in terms of pieces.  Buy however many (I made 14 sets) of each piece that you think is interesting.  You have to buy a cup of Legos-you can't just buy individual pieces but I am going to assume that you will have plenty of Legos to fill up a cup.  You may need more than one cup.

If you don't have a Lego store near you or you can't find wheels or other parts you want at the Lego store, go to Bricklink and search for a piece or two that you are interested in having in your kit.  Make sure that ONE seller has all of that one piece that you need (so if you need 14 sets, make sure that one seller has 14 of that one item).  Then search that seller's store for other pieces that you can use for the car kit and that they have the right number of in stock.  You may not get them the cheapest but it will be the easiest!  I would probably start with the wheels and hubs.  Not all sellers have wheels and hubs but most sellers have bricks and plates.  You may need to order from more than one seller.  But just buy what they have in stock.  If they don't have the right number of pieces, then find a different piece to use.  Then have your child create the car.  I think that way would be MUCH easier than the way I did it!

Food
For N2's family party we didn't do any food that related to Legos.  We just served Mexican food-quesadillas, tacos, beans, corn, fresh veggies and fresh fruit because that is what N2 love the most.  For their friends' party we had pizza from Costco.  I put on pepperoni and had Brian slice the pizza to look like a Lego brick with 2 studs.  Most kids picked it off but whatever it was fun!  Since I didn't get to do my juice boxes to look like Legos, I wanted the pizza to look like Legos!

I made cupcakes for N2's friends' party and decorated them with the Lego candy I made but cut them in half.

For the family party I made a Lego cake.  I made a 9x13 inch cake and cut it into thirds.  I cut one of the thirds in half.  I iced each piece a different color (I tried to make red but the gel color I use never turns out red-it turns out pink so I added some blue and I added too much blue so I kept adding red but all I got was maroon).  I used marshmallows cut in half to make the studs.  I frosted the cake first and then added the marshmallows and frosted over top those.  I'm not sure if that was the way to go but I couldn't figure out how to frost the marshmallows first.