How to Throw a Simple Lego Movie Party

Typically, I really enjoy throwing birthday parties for my kids (like this or this or this). I will usually start brainstorming ideas and curating a pinterest board a good month before the celebration. I will slowly collect cupcake wrappers or napkins or steamers that fit with my theme and color scheme when I’m out shopping or browsing online. Then, by the day of the party, I will have loads of yummy treats and decorations and activities all prepared, and it is fun and wonderful.

That is not at all how this party went down. I’m not completely sure why, but I was feeling particularly stressed out about this party. I couldn’t bring myself to pick a date. Or send invitations. Or really plan anything. Finally, about a week and a half before the date we had decided on my wonderful husband took it upon himself to make some invitations (even though that typically falls under my jurisdiction). The fact that I allowed him to make invitations without micro-managing really shows how off my normal party game I was.

I was very grateful he took care of that task, and I was relieved to know we had a confirmed date, location (our home), and guests. I didn’t really have time to prepare for the party at all until just a couple days before, which limited the number of things I could do. I had to limit myself to just a few projects. For instance, I really wanted to make the cute marshmallow lego heads I had made for a previous party, but I ran out of time and just told myself it was fine.

And it was. In fact, despite completely planning, shopping for, and preparing this party in about two days instead of my typical month, in the middle of the chaotic buzz of the party, my son looked at me with a big grin and said, “Mom, this is the best party ever!” And that was it – heart melted.

I think what made this party so much fun for my son was that I really focused on what he said he wanted for the party because I didn’t have the time or energy to think about anything else. He said he wanted a Lego Movie party where the kids went on a type of treasure hunt/adventure, so that’s what we did. And he loved it.

I think we all know that our kids don’t really care much about a perfectly styled desert table, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded.

Not that I have anything against a gorgeous desert table – in fact, it’s kind of my jam. But it was a good experience for me to learn that I didn’t have to do a super fancy party if I didn’t feel up to it this time around. Next birthday party I may spend 60 hours hand-embroidering personalized gift bags for each of the guests, and that would be okay too – if it’s what I wanted to do and it didn’t take away from what my child wanted. Yesterday I read Infarrantly Creative’s discussion of letting kids throw their own parties, and I kind of loved it. I may give that a try next year.

So anyway – enough kid party philosophy – want to see what went into this simple Lego Movie party? (Now, I realize that this party may not be considered “simple” by everyone. But for me, this was less complicated than our norm and did not take much time to put together.) P.S. I have included some affiliate links for some of the supplies I used for the party.

When the kids got to the house, they were instructed to grab a Bricksburg construction hat just like Emmet’s. I made these by applying a vinyl logo to the front of plastic construction party hats. This was my big craft project for the party, but it was pretty easy to put together with my Silhouette. You can read about how I made them and get the free cut file HERE.

We had a few big piles of legos laying out for the kids to play with while we waited for everyone to arrive. When we were ready to start, I handed my son this top secret file:

The file contained the first challenge the kids had to complete in order to receive the clue to the location of the next challenge. The first challenge was to build a certain number of lego towers of a certain height.

When they accomplished the task, we handed them a clue that led them to the next challenge, which was a lego toss. That led to another challenge, which was a kind of relay race where they had to carry legos on spoons. Then they received a message and key they used to decipher the final clue to find the piece of resistance (which was just something I cut out of a piece of poster board).

Finally, we just had pizza (“pizza resistance” get it?), let the kids run around the backyard, and ate yummy cupcakes.

I set up a simple desert table that really only had the cupcakes and goodie bags on it. Target has a line of lego-themed party decorations and supplies. I picked up the foam lego garland and a tablecloth to use as a backdrop for the table. To print the posters, I downloaded free coloring pages, resized them to the right dimensions in photoshop, and had them printed as engineering prints at Staples. I really, really liked the way they turned out, and my kids had fun coloring them after the party.

For the goodie bags, I just drew lego faces on plain yellow bags and filled them with candy and little toys (Target has some cool stackable rainbow crayon things with the lego party supplies that the kids really liked).

And that’s it! If you liked this post, please pin the image below! 🙂

 

If you are throwing a Lego party, you might want to check out my post on our last Lego party here: