how to have a Lego party!

What to do for my little buddy's fourth birthday party? After toying with ideas ranging from monsters to rockets, we landed on everyone's favorite building toy, Legos!  It helps that between my hubby's childhood Lego sets, sets that he has purchased for--yes--himself as adult, and all the kids various Legos, that we had an obscene amount  plenty of Legos to work with!

So I got busy on Pinterest, found more ideas than I could ever execute, several parties that must have cost a fortune and were way out of our league, and plenty of good, inexpensive fun that were just right for us. Here's what I did:

Favors:  Based on this idea I cut, folded and decorated yellow paper party bags to look like Mini-figure heads. I love Sharpie markers! These bags were filled with a Lego favor (a fabulous friend found batches of these on clearance at the Lego Store--hurray!) and a baby-food jar with a painted lid, filled with Lego-shaped candy.

Decorations: One giant Lego-building table, made by hubby the day before, out of a sheet of plywood, with 2x4's around the edges to create a lip, and edges covered with painter's tape to prevent splinters. Placed on top of a couple low cabinets hubby had in the garage (but cinderblocks or low tables would work well too).

I also used bright primary color streamer-red, yellow, green and blue. I strung up lots of yellow balloons (again with mini-fig faces drawn on) hung upside down from ribbons from stairways, chandeliers and anywhere else I could think of. And I drew some picture "cover-ups" for the art that is in our kitchen, so they matched the decor (just adhere to the glass with painters tape).

Food: Can you have a four-year-old's party without pizza? We couldn't. There were cupcakes with the Lego candy on top, marshmallow-pops, and mini-fig chocolates made from a silicone ice-cube tray.  The candle-holder was made by whittling a regular birthday candle to fit in a mini-figure's hand.

The mini-figure marshmallow-pops are made by putting a large marshmallow onto a lollipop stick (from your local craft store), topping it with half a small marshmallow, and dipping in yellow dipping chocolate (I used Wilton). I used an edible food-marker to make the faces, but piped chocolate might work better (the marker didn't write on the chocolate very well). They can also be made as cake pops but these are easier. Thanks to this party site for the great idea!

Activities:  The kids loved just being able to play with all the Legos! Hubby had set out many of the sets that were already built in areas like Lego City, Airport, Harbor, Space station, and Fort Legorado, on different tables and low book-shelves around the ground floor. We put some Duplo in one area away from the rest of the Legos for the littlest kids. 

And we did play games! After seeing a ton of fabulous games we pared it down and played "Pin the 4 on the mini-figure", and a Lego version of "Hot Potato" with a Lego "potato". The best part of  the Hot Potato game was that every kid got a small prize as they were eliminated from the game so that everyone was a winner (important when you are a kid!).  We had a tower building contest. And a mason-jar of the Lego-shaped candy made a great "guess how many are in the jar?" game--with the winner getting to take the whole jar of candy home.   I had also printed out the Lego Bingo cards from the link above, but found that the energy level of 13 kids aged 3-6 was insane just too high, so we nixed that idea at the last minute. I think older kids would have had a blast with that game.

Lego "Hot Potato"

Pin the "4" on the Lego Man

my "tower-builders" hard at work!

So there you have it...the Lego birthday! It was a great hit, and was fun and pretty easy to plan (thanks again to the wonder of the Internet!).  I hope you enjoyed seeing all the fun!