June 29, 2008

Planning a LEGO Party

Caleb’s 5th birthday is just around the corner, and we’re throwing a LEGO themed party to celebrate. He had a few other hair-brained ideas that just weren’t practical. We used a few mind tricks to convince him that this was the party he wanted. It wasn’t hard though. He loves LEGOs.

Why LEGO?

Over the past few months Caleb has grown to love playing with LEGOs. He’s borderline obsessed. That’s cool though. They don’t need batteries, and they involve him creatively more than any other toy he has …except for maybe a pen and a blank sheet of paper.

I was a deprived kid and never had many LEGOs. Now I can hardly wait for my daily building sessions with Caleb. Sometimes I look up from my intense building, and Caleb’s not even in the room anymore. So there I sit. A 32 year old man playing with LEGOs all by himself. I know, I know. Highly embarrassing. I reminded myself of a guy I met yesterday who worked in the LEGO store. He was a single man whose life revolved around LEGOs. He kinda weirded me out. Now I’m him!

Invitations

Last year’s Pirate invitations must have gotten a passing grade from the wife, so she asked me to design this year’s invitation as well. This time, using the LEGO Digital Designer app, I built the text with LEGO bricks. By the way, that’s a fantastic app, and is almost as addictive as building with real LEGOs. Caleb loves it and already knows his way around it with very little help. It easily exported my LEGO creations as transparent PNG files, which I then imported into Photoshop and added text and created the inside of the invitation. Here’s the outside of the invitation:

We’ve sent these to his entire class from school and a few others, but since it’s summer, there will certainly be a good many out of town on vacation. We’re kinda hoping for that anyway.

Games

We’re still coming up with these, but so far, we’re going to have a few party games…

• Guess how many bricks are in the jar


• Similar to an Easter egg hunt, we’re having a LEGO brick hunt. We’re using the larger Duplo size bricks.


• Build the tallest tower contest.


• A foot race where you have to carry a LEGO brick in a spoon.

Let us know if you have any other good ideas.

Along with the cake and ice cream, we’re also bringing back the snow cone machine. It was a crowd favorite last year. Tiffany also found a candy store that makes Lego block candy, so two pounds of it is being delivered this week. Kellog’s sells Lego fruit snacks which will join our mini Lego sets in favor bags. Oh, and LEGO men have hands that are perfectly sized to hold candles.