LEGO-Duplo Birthday Blast

Basically from the moment I found out Baby #2 was another boy, I started envisioning the possibilities for double birthday parties. My boys are both winter babies, with E born at the end of December and Sawyer born at the beginning of February, so my plan from the get-go was to split the difference and go with a mid-January combined birthday party. The timing is good: Everyone (but really, mostly me) is recovered from the holidays and all the kids are bored to death staying inside.

Of course, I had to give Sawyer his own 1^st birthday party before I could move into the world of combined birthday parties. But when Easton was turning 5 and Sawyer was turning 2 – it was ON. One party, one day of crazy creativity and effort, lots of kids at an indoor playspace so my house doesn’t get trashed.

But I will always love a good theme, no matter how “scaled down” I promised #DoneWithFun Daddy the party planning would be. There were lots of options, but LEGO was the winner: Easton was (and is) obsessed with LEGOs, and Sawyer loves to build with his Duplos too.

So, I got to work building a birthday blast, and you can do. There are a lot of ideas I chose, but scale it to fit your needs; in hindsight, I probably could have done less than half these things and it still would have been a great party. I’ll learn someday.

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LEGO-Duplo Birthday Party

Jump to: Entertainment | Food | Decor | Favors

Invitation

As a graphic designer, I always start with the invitation as the primary creative inspiration. After scouring Pinterest and Etsy, I combined a few ideas to make my own design.

If you want to design your own invitation, there is a free LEGO lookalike font called LEGOTHICK that you can download and install. The other font used on the LEGO block is Helvetica.

Interested in customizing my invitation for your kiddo? Let’s talk.

Entertainment

Location: Pump It Up, Lisle, IL

Pump It Up is my favorite birthday spot for the preschool age. It’s big, well run, and makes my job as the party planner very simple. The best part, in my opinion, is that when you are in the playspaces, it is your party guests only: There are no outside guests or other parties in your space at the same time. That makes it easier to keep track of your kids and less chaotic overall.

Click to enlarge each image:

I kept entertainment to a minimum because giant inflatables for 75 minutes is all the entertainment a group of thirty 5-year-olds and 2-year-olds need. But when we moved into the party room phase of the party, I was prepared with a low-key activity to keep the kids occupied while parents wrangled juice boxes, opened packages of snacks, and we waited for cupcakes to be served.

I created a blank LEGO Minifigure coloring sheet and made a bunch of copies so the kids could color their own custom creation.

Here’s the free printable LEGO Minifigure Coloring Sheet:

Download LEGO Minifigure Coloring Sheet

Amazon had a package of 24 crayon sets, so I scattered these around the tables to use, and invited the kids to take home with them at the end of the party too.

Food

LEGO Cupcakes

Kid parties = cupcakes. It’s as simple as that. There’s no cutting required and minimal mess. After last year’s superhero party with brightly frosted cupcakes that stained everyone’s faces and clothing, I had the inspired idea to keep it simple: Funfetti cupcakes with white frosting. Add colored dot sprinkles and a candy LEGO or LEGO mini figure to each cupcake, and you have cute, relatively clean party treats.

Supplies

Silicone LEGO candy molds
1 bag each candy melts in Red, Bright Blue, Yellow, and Green
Colored sprinkles (sequin/dot)
White frosted cupcakes

Here’s a party tip every mama should take to heart: Buy store-bought cupcakes! I homemade these so that I could personalize the colored cupcake wrappers. Guess what? Not one person cared about the colored cupcake wrappers. Next year, I will call my favorite bakery and order cupcakes, specifying the color frosting (if ever I do colored frosting again) and never again will I think about the importance of colored cupcake wrappers.

If you buy already-frosted cupcakes, here are the simple steps for easy LEGO cupcakes:

Make candy LEGOs (more on that in a minute).
Add sprinkles to already-frosted store-bought cupcakes.
Put 1 candy LEGO or LEGO minifigure in the center of each cupcake.
Serve cupcakes at party. That’s it. There’s nothing else to do.

Ta-da! So easy, right?

But I get it. A candy LEGO sounds complicated. I promise you it’s not. A LEGO candy mold is necessary, but you can get the 2-pack of molds on Amazon for under $10.

The LEGO bricks couldn’t be easier. Melt your candy melts according to the package directions. Make sure it’s very well melted so that it’s on the thin side and easily pours or spoons into the molds. Fill each mold to the top. Gently shake the mold side to side a little or drop the mold gently on the table a few times if you need to “settle” the candy-melt mixture so that it’s even. Place in refrigerator or freezer to harden. Once hard (about 10 minutes), pop out of mold and it’s ready for the cupcake.

The hardest part about this process is making four different colors. It just means more dishes and more time, but not a lot more effort.

A candy LEGO mini figure is complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. I made the mistake of insisting that the LEGO mini figure had to be wearing clothing – so I molded the figures from yellow candy melts and then painstakingly PAINTED blue pants and red shirts on each tiny minifigure. There are so many problems with this idea:

It took forever. Like more than an hour to do 12 of them.
It didn’t even look good. The end results of these guys was acceptable at best, as it was difficult to get the colors on evenly.
It’s messy. “Painting” with melted candy melt is about as awful as it sounds. It starts to re-solidify on the paintbrush while you’re still dabbing it on, resulting in a big glob of half-hardened candy melt that makes it impossible to paint.

I read other tutorials that suggest piping individual colors into the molds, but I ruled that out as too complicated as well.

Here’s my tip: If you must have LEGO mini figures for your cupcakes, make solid yellow ones only. Don’t think about the fact that they are technically naked. No one cares at that point. Certainly not your 5-year-old and 2-year-old guests. Plain yellow candy LEGO mini figures would have been just as cute as their messily painted counterparts, and I could have saved myself A LOT of headache.

Speaking of headache … Because I don’t know when enough is enough, I added in cookies and brownies to the birthday party plan so the adults would have something to snack on too.

To make regular chocolate chip cookies more fun and theme-appropriate, I used a mixture of traditional semi-sweet chocolate chips and these bright candy-coated rainbow chips.

LEGO brownies

Before this party, I thought those brownie pans that claimed to give you all crispy edges was ridiculous – just one more item to clutter up my kitchen. But then I wanted to make LEGO brownies. And I wanted them to have straight, crisp, block-like edges.

I bought the least expensive pan option on Amazon and found it easy to use, easy to clean, and really did make perfect brownies. I guess it was worth my $15 after all, since I do use it every time I bake brownies now.

These LEGO brownies were the last item on my to-do list so I took some shortcuts: I used Ghiradelli box mix brownies and Betty Crocker cookie icing to frost them. The Betty Crocker cookie icing comes in bright LEGO colors and goes on smoothly before hardening. It’s perfect for these LEGO brownies.

The only question was whether to use regular M&Ms or Mini M&Ms. I debated, and agonized, and then decided to do both. I used 4 regular M&Ms, figuring those would be the Duplo brownies, on some, and 6 Mini M&Ms on others, to make a true LEGO version.

Décor

Click to enlarge:

LEGO Mini-Figure cutouts – download the awesome free printable from Wink & Daisies
Duplo cupcake – Used as a table decoration
LEGO birthday cake – Used to anchor balloons
Cake stand built from Duplos
“5” and “2” built from Duplos
Party plate and napkins package:

Tip: If you’re looking for different options on Amazon, search “Color Brick” and “Building Block” party supplies instead of LEGO.

Tablecloths:

Balloons:

Party Favors

Here’s the area where I chose to keep it super-simple. In the past, I’ve put together more elaborate party favor bags filled with pencils, stickers, slime, punch bags, and more – all the little toys that drive me nuts at my house when my kids bring them home. All those things go in the garbage within about 48 hours, never to be seen again.

For the big kids:

I decided to devote approximately the same amount of money to buying one item per kid, mostly because Amazon made buying LEGO Minifigure blind bags affordable.

My kids are still young, so I looked for the best package deal on Amazon, not caring which “series” the blind bags were front. I paid about $5 per bag. I added a print-it-myself favor tag with some ribbon and the party favors were done.

Here’s the free printable Party Favor Thank You tag:

Download LEGO Birthday Party Favor Thank You Tag

The favor tag is designed to be printed on perforated Avery 5392 badge stock (6 per sheet) so you can easily break apart the favor tags. Or print on regular 8.5 x 11 cardstock and use a paper cutter to slice.

For the little kids:

For the 2-year-olds, however, a minifigure with its tiny parts was not an option, and I could’t find an affordable Duplo equivalent, though I looked high and low. Instead, I turned to Amazon for (imitation) LEGO straw cups. Again, added a favor tag with ribbon and the little kids were taken care of too.

Annnnnd that’s it: Two hours of fun, a whirlwind of color and sugar and general chaos, and then we were back at our house, tearing through the giant bag of gifts the boys received. Each year that I throw parties for the boys, I scale it back a little bit more than the year before. The LEGO birthday blast spiraled out of control a little bit at the end (hello, calling in favors to have #DoneWithFun Daddy craft decoration from Duplos), but all in all, this party was my easiest and most successful to date. I didn’t even feel stressed at Pump It Up.

Wishing you an equally stress-free birthday blast! Share your own party pics with #NeverDoneWithFun on Instagram or connect with me if I can help you with customized LEGO printables, invitations or cupcake decorations.