Lego Birthday Party
Like most boys of a certain age, my 10-year-old, Connor, is obsessed with Legos. Exhibit A: his bedroom at this very moment.
We do not walk into his room at night without turning on the lights. Because we all know the true definition of feet, right? "A device used for finding Legos in the dark."
Connor's Lego crush began young, when he was only four. So for his fifth birthday, we threw him a Lego Birthday Party.
The Theme:
Lego Birthday Party
The Invitations:
Making a Lego invitation is easy if you have a personal paper trimmer and a circle cutter. (And yes, admitting you have those means you out yourself as a former scrapbooker. But having the supplies for this invitation lessens the social sting, yes?) Each invitation requires a 5x7 rectangle and 6 1-inch circles. I used tiny squares of double-side foam tape to attach each circle to the front of the invitation to make my 3D Lego brick. On the back, I glued a printout of the party details.
Bonus points: I found a free Lego font online to spice it up, because I might have a tiny font addiction. If you'd like to get spicy too, Google "free Lego fonts." There are a bunch of them out there.
The Decor:
Back in the olden days of 2008, it was hard to find Lego party supplies, which astounded me. (It's much easier to find these days.) I searched forever, and all I could find was really basic Lego napkins and some fairly lame Lego placemats. I supplemented with square, primary colored plates and my real dishes (gasp) and you know what? It was fine!
Proving, once again, that half the stuff that drives me bonkers doesn't even matter in the end.
The Entertainment:
We played with Legos. I mean, duh.
The Cake:
OK people. Let's talk Lego cake, shall we? In theory, making a birthday cake that looks like a Lego brick should be easy. I mean, it's a rectangle with circles. It's hard to get more basic. And yes, a rectangular cube is fairly simple to make by baking your favorite cake batter in a loaf pan (or mini-loaf pan, if you want to make individual-sized brick cakes.) But it's those circles. Oy. The circles.
After much Googling, I decided to use large marshmallows, cut in half, as my circle base. I would just coat each half-marshmallow with the same frosting as used on the cake and stick it on with a toothpick. Right? Right. Problem was, frosting doesn't stick well to marshmallows. And trying to ice those suckers while balancing them on a toothpick is akin to juggling while driving a unicycle. As a result, Connor's first cake looked like this.
It vaguely resembles a Lego brick, but also vaguely resembles blue mushrooms sprouting from the top of a blue box.
(Minifig man says: Don't even think about dissing the cake.)
For his family party, I got smarter and decided to dip the marshmallow halves in melted chocolate instead of trying to smear frosting on them. That was way easier. And tastier, if I do say so myself.
Connor clearly agreed.
The Gifts:
If you haven't figured this out already, you should know that people tend to buy gifts based on the theme of the birthday party. And that is how Connor got his first big kid set of Legos (recommended age 7-14): Indiana Jones and the Lost Tomb. He put it together in an afternoon.
And it's been true love, ever since.
Originally posted October 2013