Lego Party

One of my favorite things to do each year with the boys is work with them to plan and throw their own unique birthday party.  This started when I went a little over the top with the Big Guy’s 1st party and has continued for 5 years now.

Since they could talk or really communicate at all, I work with the boys to figure out what “they are in to” and we make the whole event to reflect this theme.  My only rule….nothing violent.  I guess this is a boy thing, but we have had to have friendly pirates and smiley robots in the past.  This year’s theme:

LEGO’s

In the past we have done all kinds of crazy things to develop an invitation.  This year…I found a template that I loved, so I purchased it for the invitation, bookmark, thank you, etc.

The templates were downloadable .pdf format documents that were easily customized in Photoshop.  I think you could use any of them without Photoshop, but this is what I used.

(A neighbor and fellow Lego Fanatic brought over some of his models to show the kids and display!)

Next, to keep the Birthday Boy engaged in the planning of the party, found an idea from one of my favorite Podcast/Blogger and we made a Lego Bingo Game.  He built 20+ Lego “Model’s” and I photographed them, and photoshoped (yes, that is a word….if not, it should be) them into a grid.  I used the Living Locurto template for a door sign for a background. And voila….after some tedious mixing of the grid to have different bingo cards…..we had a custom game for our party.

I suggested to the Birthday Boy that for favors, we give each party-goer a bag of Lego pieces that they could use to make a car.  He helped me pick out all of the pieces from the Giant Lego Wall and then suggested they all have drivers….I did not have a strong argument against the idea and decided that including pieces to make a driver for the car would be less expensive than renting a princess for a day….so, there you have it….favor bags with Lego pieces that were used first as bingo chips, then to build cars and drivers….and, of course they had to race.

Birthday Boy designed a track, I painted it, Law Man Built it…..in that order, and the party was a huge success.

I will say it was one of the hottest (as in temperature) morning birthday parties I have ever been to.  In fact, I was a little disappointed in the pictures…or lack there of….I was so hot and concerned that the kids might get sick…..apparently I missed a lot of great shots.

(See the plain kitchen napkins in the picture?….I forgot to grab some coordinating napkins at the store, so the morning of the party I told the Birthday Boy that I needed to run out and get some.  He said, “Oh, Mom, just use plain ones…it’s no big deal.”  It doesn’t get much better than that.)

On a side note…..in the past, I have invited everyone in school, church, neighbors and family with kids…..along with Grandparents.  This has led to some VERY chaotic parties.  (The chaos doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother some of the past guests.)  This year, I decided to take a different approach and limit the number to a few of the Birthday Boy’s classmates, family with kids, and a couple of neighbor kids…..and Grandparents….I would not ever hear the end of that.  I think I offended people who normally are invited.  Completely unintentional, but I felt terrible just the same.

***How do you handle invitation lists to your kids parties???***