Lego Birthday Party - AKA The Pinterest Birthday

I blame Pinterest for why this party suddenly grew to epic proportions.  The Monkey and Small Fry are 23 months apart, meaning their birthdays are within 3 1/2 weeks of each other.  It's really easy, since they're into the same things, to just celebrate all at once.   And once I started seeing ideas here and there on Pinterest, I made a Lego Birthday Party board and decided we'd have a Lego Party.

Last year we skipped a party, had a small celebration for each kid.  In previous years, we've invited our family and friends which always ends up being about 20 or 30 people, but mostly adults and a handful of younger kids. 

This year.  This year, Small Fry is in pre-k and the Monkey is in Kindergarten.  And I invited all the family and friends from past parties and then all the kids in both of the boys' classes.  And the guest list quickly skyrocketed to nearly 50 people (or more, it was a blur the past few days). 

Thankfully, my mom provided all the food, so I could focus on decorations, cake and desserts, games and goodie bags. 

It was nearly impossible to get pictures of the boys.  But here's Small Fry sitting still for .8 seconds.  My friend made the shirts using reverse applique technique and a yellow minky for the minifigure.

 

And the Monkey, wearing his Lego minifigure shirt and his new Lego necklace.  (more on the necklaces below). 


The gift/goodie bag table before the guests arrived.  The small minifigure head with balloons was purchased from Container Store.  I filled the head with the crayons I made as a take-home gift.  I wrapped a few rectangular boxes with solid red paper for added height.  Container Store has LOTS of fantastic Lego items, perfect for party decorations and then gifts to the birthday kiddo afterwards. 

Next to the gift table was the "Guess How Many Legos" game.  In the clear glass container (a rectangular vase I had), I put in 193 Legos.  Had guests write their guesses and the winner received the water bottle pictured on the right.  (The giant minifigure head is the Sort and Store head)

Couldn't forget about drinks!  (We had beer too).  I actually didn't end up getting a picture of the food.  But we had a mid-morning party and had platters of fruit, veggies, dips (sweet and savory), deviled eggs, cheeses, and pre-made sandwiches (turkey with various kinds of cheese) as well as condiments, and add-ons like pickles.  Everyone snacked on and off throughout the party. 

The cake was inspired by another Pinterest find, and a friend of mine made it for me.  I made cupcakes too, as we were expecting many guests (there's a female small minifigure head in the right of the picture, also from Container Store). 

Mmm.  Lego cake.

My kitchen full of guests (I guess you can see the food a bit).  We served the food on our kitchen table, which had the hidden leaf added, and placed plates, napkins and silverware on the kitchen island.  (Notice Split Pea downing a juice box...quite the treat for him). 

We played one game (Lego Bingo), which was a HIT with the older kids (the Monkey's 5 and 6 year-old friends).  But then the kids all had a blast just playing in our playroom and all around the house.  (As Small Fry gets tackled by his uncle!)

The Monkey was the only kid who sat at the kitchen table to eat his lunch.  And build a Lego set, of course. 

The gift table serving its purpose.

Since we have three kids 6 and under, we have a variety of toys, perfect for the various ages of kids that came to the party.

Our "dining room table"  (We sold the dining room table a few years ago when we inherited this air hockey table.  It gets much more use than a table ever did).  This was great for all of the kids.  People played the entire length of the party. 

I didn't plan so well on the candles, so we used the leftover candles from Split Pea's 1st birthday. 

The Monkey and his BFF, Captain America, eyeing the cupcakes. 

I made these from scratch, vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting.  I used the silicone brick and minifigure molds with candy melts to make the cupcake toppers. 

THE Lego Cake.  White cake with buttercream frosting. 

Even said "Happy Birthday" on his minifigure head. 

I was so sad to cut him open.  (Notice I'm sporting a Lego necklace too!)

We actually cut each slice into fourths to serve to the kids. 

My cupcakes.  I'm SO not a cupcake maker, but these actually turned out to be tasty. 

Couldn't leave out Split Pea.  He navigated the people fantastically, and true to form, ate his way through the day. 

Even the toddlers played dress-up!

The box of costumes we have was a HUGE hit (I buy costumes on clearance the day after Halloween and the kids use them year-round for dress-up.)

All of the kiddos went home with a few treats. 

Lego necklaces that I made literally the night before the party - they went together really quickly.  (some of the adults got these too - I had a bunch of different colors). 



Minifigure and Brick crayons.  I did NOT use the same molds for crayons and food.  I also followed a few tutorials I'd pinned (here and here), but ended up using silicone cupcake liners to hold the broken up crayons and melt them in the oven (225 degrees for about 20-30 minutes) and poured the melted crayon into the molds.  Let me know if you want more details, but this worked really well for us. 

And marshmallow Minifigure pops.  I used an M&M for the top of the head, and some black candy melts to pipe on the smile.  


Once the guests left, Split Pea and Small Fry napped while the Monkey played with his Legos.  I cleaned the house and hubs left for an important poker tournament.  As evening approached, we started opening presents.  (This was bigger than their Christmas and Hanukkah). 

Small Fry's favorite gift, from his girlfriend at school was a Melissa and Doug Dinosaur Stamp Set.  He could not WAIT to play with it.  

One thing I noticed that is new this year is that a) the Monkey can read his cards and b) his friends all wrote him a message.  What an amazing milestone.  

From one of the Monkey's friends.  I must find where this was purchased, because I LOVE it (and Small Fry wants one too).

The big gift from mom and dad.  A new Leap Pad for Small Fry.

And a DS XL for the Monkey.  I actually used Christmas and birthday money and gift cards to purchase these big-ticket items for the boys.  They received so many amazingly wonderful presents from their friends.  I actually cried when they were opening everything because I just felt that they are so lucky.  

 Their amazing haul of gifts.  Excuse Small Fry for the sour face, he was mad I made him stop checking out the toys to snap a photo. 

All in all, I hope the boys don't think I'll be doing this every year, but I am so glad we did host this event.  It was fun,  I think all the kids had a great time, and so did the adults.  Surprisingly, the house wasn't any more disheveled than it would be after an afternoon of the boys playing. 

Next year when it comes to birthday-planning time, I am definitely going to have to avoid Pinterest.  ;)

Homemade Valentines - Wildcards Tutorial

This year, the Monkey gets to celebrate Valentine's Day at school.  The catch is that all his Valentine cards have to be handmade (and no candy).  I was psyched to hear that, as I knew exactly what we'd be doing.  He's almost 6 (only 3 weeks) and it's a great time to introduce him to sewing.

I planned to make Wildcards - index cards with a fused fabric on one side, decorated with stickers and a plastic overlay, and filled with sparkles and sequins. 

Materials needed for one card:

- One 4x6 or 5x7 index card
- Fabric piece the same size as index card
- Heat-fusible webbing (Steam-a-seam, heat n' bond, wonder under, etc) the same size as the index card)
- Clear plastic (overhead projector/transparency sheets) cut to the same size as index card)
- Stickers or flat treasures
- sequins, sparkles and other shiny glitter to fill the card
- thread, sewing machine, scissors

The concept uses a lot of the fundamentals he's working on every day, and I wanted him to be able to do as many of the steps as he could, so it was really him making the cards and me just assisting.  I ended up doing the ironing stuff, he helped for a few, but 26 cards take a bit of time. 

We started with a quick tutorial of how to sew (I need to do some more in-depth instruction, but for now it was just about how it all moves).  I had him sew through some paper to get the hang of it.  (My machine also has a speed control which is really useful for teaching young kids). 

  

With time quickly inching closer to Valentine's Day, we had to buckle down to finish the cards.  Luckily we were granted a break when a massive winter storm hit, and the entire family (including Hubby, who could watch the other kiddos) was snowed in for the day.  

I had already fused a heat-activated fusible webbing to a stack of 4x6" index cards (unlined).  I used Steam-a-Seam because I had it on hand, but you can also use any other heat-activated fusible (Heat n' Bond, Wonder Under, Therm-O-Web, etc).  I then removed the paper backing from the fused side of the index card and placed the fusible web side of the card on the wrong side of my chosen fabric.  (Using a cotton, no steam setting on my iron)

While I continued to fuse the fabric to the cards, the Monkey trimmed the fabric flush with the edges of the cards.  

Once we had all of his cards fused and trimmed, we laid out a variety of stickers and mostly flat trinkets (I had some stick-on jewel hearts and puffy stickers.  I collected heart and Valentine-themed stickers from the dollar store and various craft stores.  The only rule was nothing directly on the edge because I didn't want him to sew over it.  

After the cards were decorated, I took a piece of clear plastic (overhead projector sheets or something similar works really well), and placed it on top of the card.  I happened to add a decorative thread in the top of the machine, but any thread works well.  

I instructed the Monkey on sewing around the card, lining up the presser foot with the fabric edge, and marked where he wanted to stop and start so that there would be an opening left in order to put in some sparkles and sequins.  We worked on speed and pivoting. 

Using a funnel, he placed a small-kid-sized handful of sparkles into the open hole of the card (probably about 1/2-1 tablespoon).  Then I helped him sew the opening shut, and because our clear plastic wasn't the exact same size as the card, he trimmed the plastic flush with the rest of the card.  

After the cards were finished, he needed to write on them.  He still needs to finish writing on the ones to his classmates, but couldn't wait to give one to my mom, who of course owned a quilt store for over 30 years and wrote books on teaching kids to sew.  I'm pretty sure my heart melted at this point. 

Now we just have to decorate his box to bring home the Valentines from his classmates.  Can't wait for that project!

Project 366 - Days 11-21

Yup, true to form, I dropped the ball. I wish I was better at this blogging stuff. I have daydreams of becoming some amazingly profound blogger full of good advice and this beautiful life. Alas, I spend my days with gooey kiddos, dealing with the woes of red taped insurance companies (that could be a whole blog on its own), and always seem to get behind. But I have been taking photos.

Day 11 - I made the jump back to sewing fitted cloth diapers. I get bored easily, and love to change up my projects. I've been working with a hybrid fitted for a while and one night decided it'd be fun to whip up 20 or so. Haha!

Day 12 - Small Fry only is in preschool 3 days/week while the Monkey is in kindergarten every day. So on Tuesday and Thursday, it's just the two young boys at home. Small Fry got this Cookie Monster Play Doh set for Christmas, and like with most of their haul, I put it away for later. But he's been asking for it nearly every day. So today he got to play with it. He LOVED making veggies and letters and feeding them to Cookie. Funny enough, Small Fry, my eater, is pretty much a vegetarian. So he really enjoyed making all the veggies to feed to cookie.

Day 13 - I'm on a few Facebook boards of online "friends" and one of my boards has recently taken a liking to these little creatures. They're Mutant Caterpillars and apparently very hard to come by. One really late night, I'd passed out, woken up at like 4 am to read Facebook, Twitter and my email (the life of a tech junkie), and saw that the shop owner had stocked some of these in the middle of the night. Without thinking, I bought one. His name is Espressolott and he likes coffee. And he's adorable. The boys love him, but he's living in my studio, as both of us are fueled by coffee.

Day 14 - I have a DK Visual Dictionary that my fact-loving Monkey (a boy after his mom's heart) loves to read. Each page has detailed pictures and descriptions of many things, including everything about the body. Both of the older boys enjoyed the two-page spread on how the baby grows, and I loved hearing the Monkey describe each stage. "First, the baby starts out looking like a tiny dinosaur..." I'm very matter-of-fact with the boys, and I'm a scientist (well, that's what I studied to be), so I love sharing this stuff with them. In this picture, they're looking at a cross-section of the brain, talking about the pituitary gland and how that's the part that doesn't work in Split Pea. They know so much.

Day 15 - Split Pea was ready for a story and some nursing in his rocker with "Goodnight Moon". I can't believe he's 16 1/2 months old.

Day 16 - More trouble from Split Pea who decided he didn't want to go to bed after his usual routine, but rather wander around, and jump up and down in his sock monkey chair.

Day 17 - Hubby calls me "Laura-ganized". My brain is a mess, my house is full of stuff and probably looks messy to others. But I know where every little everything is. And on certain things, it must be meticulously organized. Like with my snaps. All organized by numerically and alphabetically by the color card.

Day 18 - We got this air hockey table from my sister who didn't have room for it anymore. We sold our dining room table on Craigslist and put the air hockey table in its place. The boys don't play on it everyday, but recently, they have. And Split Pea LOVES to join in. We just have to keep reminding him about putting his fingers over the goal. YEOWCH!

Day 19 - I was in my studio and apparently Split Pea wanted something in the toy box that he couldn't otherwise reach. So in he went.

Day 20 - Or apparently the theme of standing in things is becoming a habit. (Watching Sprout while I was working).

Day 21 - I was taking product photos and Small Fry woke from a nap. Once he had a snack, he was ready to strike a pose. This kid is going to be FOUR in just over a week. We're best buddies and even though we struggled a lot when he was tiny, we're quickly becoming very close. He's amazingly intelligent, and willing to try anything. Really, anything. Which can be scary. Or super cool. That's how we discovered he likes oysters. :)