Winner of my wee lego giveaway

Oh look, only 5 people to randomly pick from! 

Brenda, tis you!

Thanks to those fabulous four other people for entering (insert embarrassed giggles from my clear lack of bloggy popularity)!

Lego giveaway

Oh dear, only 4 people have commented so far!

Go over here and leave me a comment to win this...

Finishes tonight!!!!

A little giveaway

For no other reason than I have been cleaning up after one party ready to move onto the next, I decided these might like to go to a new home...



One pale grey lego man t-shirt size 6 (The yellow man has been ironed on then sewn on for good measure!)

Some paper lego men bunting which alternate between blank men and happy birthday men

One lego minifigure

The t-shirt and the minifigure are leftovers from Isaac's party.  My boys have sooooo much of the stuff I dont think they'll miss one little man!  The lego men bunting I had printed on some firm quality paper at Officeworks.  We have strung some up in Isaac's room post party which he thinks is pretty cool.

Would you like them?

They can be yours if you:

follow my blog, leave me a comment (about anything really) and live in Australia!

I'll randomly draw a winner next Monday night (14/11/2011).

Good luck.

THE Lego Party!

Isaac's incredible Lego party was held on Saturday - and I must say it was one of the best parties I've done.  I was frightened about having 18 small people in my house on a day that was forecast rain, but in the end, the sun shone, the smalls were beautifully behaved and more importantly Isaac had a really nice time. 

Here's a little rundown of the party. 
Prepare yourself for photo overload!

Party guest were welcomed by our balloon wreath on the front door.  Inspiration from Pinterest of course!  And an easy to follow tutorial is this way.

The birthday boy with his baby sister in their lego man t-shirts made by me.  I bought cheap plain t-shirts from Big W, Target and Best and Less (all on sale) for these.  Each party goer got one in their party bag.  They were a little bit of work tracing, cutting, ironing on and sewing! But totes cute, yes???  I used this lego man as the template.

The gorgeous threesome - or should I say foursome if we include Miss M's teddy getting a showing!  (incidentally this teddy belonged to daddy when he was a baby so he's looking good for being over 40 years old.  matilda is obsessed with him.)

The Cake!  His legs are a little wonky but he is such a sweetie - yes?  For this I used the same template as the t-shirt lego man just enlarged a wee bit.  I baked a big slab cake then cut him out of that.  I have iced him with coloured buttercream icing and then iced the top of the cake with what I like to call 'playdough' icing (cant think of it's real name at all!!!)  Available from the top shelf of the cake aisle in the supermarket it's just like playdough!  It dyes easily too.

And no - the cake wasn't as heavy as Isaac is making it look!

Because Isaac's actual birthday cake turned out small I made these lego cupcakes as a back up.  Each small person ended up taking one home with them because I'd already 'sugared' them out by the time we got to cake!  The cupcake toppers are just lego stickers from the Lego City Sticker book (available from Target, Big W) stuck on cutout circles, laminated with a lolly pop stick on the back.

For the kids party table I was able to borrow some tables and chairs from Isaac's kinder (there has to be some benefit from being on the committee for the last four years!).  We stuck with yellow, red, blue and green for a colour theme and carried that through the tablecloth, plates, napkins and balloons.

The husband making an appearance on 'le blog' along with my tuckshop arm!!!!

I swear and declare I will never be making gingerbread men again!  Toooooo much hard work!  My lovely friend ended up icing them for me because I was totally over looking at them once I'd baked them!  Cookie cutter came from ebay a wee while ago.  It also included a lego lady which Isaac wouldn't let me use.

I simply could not go past the lego man bunting!  They inspired a number of different things for the party!  Super cute and totally FREEEEEE pattern ready for printing!

Clearly my boys already have waaaaay toooo much lego!  I poured it all out onto a bed sheet and when the party guests arrived they got to sit around build at their leisure.  Easiest and best activity ever.  They kept coming back to this over and over again which was totally fine by me!

Another party game we loved was the Lego Spoon Race - just like the egg and spoon race but with lego!  I was lucky enough to steal some very useful and helpful teenagers to assist in party game co-ordination and I highly recommend this as a way to stay sane!!!

Some of our gorgeous girly party guests trying to scoop out some lego with their spoons.

I have used the FREE Lego printable men here for Pin the Lego Label on the Lego men.  Officeworks was my best friend during the course of party planning for all my printing and enlarging needs!!!  Poor Isaac - the label is supposed to go on his t-shirt buddy, not his head!

Have houseguests, make them work for their beds!!!  This is my mum and MIL serving up lunch production line style in my too-tiny-for-a-five-member-family kitchen!  I kept it simple with chips, nuggets and little boys with some fairy bread thrown in for good measure!

You cant really see very well here but I also made Lego Water.  I just peeled off the water labels replaced them with coloured paper then sealed it with a lego sticker from the Lego book I mentioned earlier.

After all that food, everyone needs a run around in the sunshine!  I had my helpful teenagers hide bunches of these cut out coloured lego men around my garden for Lego Search and Rescue.  I used the same template here as the t-shirts and the cake.  And yes, I did end up with a blister from cutting out 50 of these men!!!  The kids just ran around the garden collecting as many as they could.  Game wise, it didn't last for long but the kids loved it anyway.

I spy a blue man!

Now I had been reliably informed that little boys don't normally like to sit and colour, but I had kept them pretty busy up to this point so they were happy to sit for a while and design their own lego men on the one's they found during Lego Search and Rescue.

  Our last party game was Lego Bingo which I initially worried they would be bored with but they all loved it.  I had them work in pairs cause I didn't have enough boards to go around everyone but this worked out well in the end as some of the older party guests helped the younger ones.  Again, this was a totally free printable I found! 

We pretty much did birthday cake after this and a mad run around outside before I sent them all home with their party bags.  I may have splurged a little bit on those and sneakily added in a lego minifigure into each one after I found them on special at the toy shop (don't tell my husband!!!) and in the end a party bag is not a party bag without some kind of lolly so a small box of smarties may have been slipped in as well!!!

What do you think? 

In all seriousness this was one of the best parties I have had and definately the best party I have had at home!  I think the secret is being super prepared and organised.  Steal some reliable teenagers to help play with the small people and pop some useful grown ups in the kitchen so you can be the busy party person without worrying about the hot food.  Close all the doors to the rooms you dont want small people in and put away or hide toys that you dont want them to play with!

You can find more lego party inspiration on my Pinterest board.

Hope I didn't bore you toooooo much with my Lego Party Love!

This week I'm grateful for...the best party ever!

All my babies dressed in their lego party t-shirts before the event! Not great picture quality cause it's from the phone but I did take all the party pics on my normal camera so I should have some other better one's to share later!

I'm ducking in late this week to being grateful!  Just wanted to say what a fabulous Lego party we had today for Isaac.  Cannot believe how perfect everything was!

I'm super grateful that it rained all night and came out mild and sunny at party time!

I'm eternally grateful for Grandma's and Nanna's and good friends who scurried around in my kitchen so I could run the party games and such!

And I'm overwhelmingly grateful that Isaac has such gorgeous wee friends who behaved themselves beautifully!  Not one fight and no tears amongst 18 small people!

Will be back in a day or so with a comprehensive Lego Party Post!  In the meantime, head on over to Bron's and share some grateful love!

My creative space....

I am currently mired in what can only be described as Lego Party Prep Hell!

Who thought it would be a good idea to make lego men gingerbread????  Gingerbread dough is the devil to work with and I cannot tell you how many of these guys got rolled back up again before I finally worked out a system for baking without breaking!

Basically - roll out your dough, press your cookie shape into it ensuring you wiggle it in nice and hard so that you cut right through the dough to the baking paper underneath.  Carefully remove all the excess dough then use kitchen scissors to cut around each shape so that what you eventually end up with is lots of lego men sitting on their own individual pieces of baking paper! 

Time consuming - yes! 

Uses lots of baking paper - yes! 

 Not needing a mental institution every time you transfer an uncooked cookie to the cooking tray only to have it break apart on you - yes!

This is the only food prep I have done so far... and the party is on Saturday.  A day which is now forecast to have all day rain and thunderstoms.  And I have 18 children and their parents arriving at my house for 2 hours.  And between now and then I have an induction program to attend in the city for my new job, after school swimming, classroom parent help, a Transition Prep session to attend, balloons to pick up, party tables and chairs to collect, an entire house to clean, a birthday cake to make and back up indoor party activities to think about just in case that weather forecast actually comes true! 

And my inlaws are staying with us...for two weeks...in our house...for two weeks...staying right in the room next to our bedroom....for two weeks.

Far more (and less whingy, whiney) creative peeps hang out here on Thursdays.

My creative space...

I have pledged my obsession with Pinterest on previous occassions.  At the moment it is my go-to source for party inspiration and when I saw these gorgeously colourful balloon wreaths I just could not help myself.

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(as an aside - I used to be able to embed images straight from pinterest onto the blog but since they rejigged pinterest when I try to do it now it asks for a width and height of the image and since I know nothing about codes and whatnot I really dont know what to put in those boxes.  Anyone come across this... and know what to do about it???!!!)

I have decided they are the perfect tv craft - mindlessly sitting there watching Glee pinning balloons into styrafoam is quite therapeutic!

Grab your bags of balloons and a bunch of pins...

...stick the pin through the neck of the balloon so it flops both ways and simply pin it into your styrofoam wreath.

Clearly four bags of 45 balloons is not going to do it so some more will be purchased tomorrow.

But look how pretty it is.  And with two parties at our house coming up soon, it's the perfect party front door treatment I think!

More creative peeps this way!

My creative space... Pippy Crochet

My undying love for my newsagent continued this week when he made sure that one of only three copies of Mollie Makes he recieved had my name on it.  Bliss and Joy.

And look who I found perched merrily in it's covers...

Pip from Meet me at Mikes! 

Perfect timing to be reading about her, cause I am currently following her fabulous tutorial and making my first ripple rug.  Pip writes the perfect instructions for crochet - really clear and easy to follow.  I learnt to crochet granny squares from her videos.

I've only done a couple of rows so far and I'm just using some yarn from my stash.  I hadn't crocheted anything in a couple of weeks and my hands were getting itchy!  I needed a project that lets me sit in front of my favourite tv shows and still feel productive and this is perfect. 

Oh, and we are still cutting out lego men for the Lego party of the century!  This is a big pad of coloured paper ready for Lego men to be cut out of and hidden around the backyard for a bit of Lego Search and Rescue.  Tell me that might keep 20 little people entertained for more than five minutes please???

Lego Men Tshirts: A tutorial (kind of)

A certain young man in this house is going to turn 5 next month and we are all systems go prepping for a Lego Party!  I have found loads of fantastic ideas on the internet and pinned them onto my pinterest board if you are interested.

Only recently, I came across these great free downloads that someone has used to make lego man bunting (which we will definately do) but I have also used them for the party invite.

Source: winksanddaisies.blogspot.com via Sonia on Pinterest

The lovely person sharing these has included a blank man, a happy birthday man and lego men with 5, 6, 7 & 8 on them, which I think is super generous of them!  We make Officeworks our best friends at party time and take all our files in there to photocopy and print.  I had them print off the Mr 5 onto some nice thick card, cut them all out and just wrote the invites out on the back.

My other great find has been these lego kirigami.

Source: zakkalife.blogspot.com via Sonia on Pinterest

How cute are all the little lego men holding hands?  We'll definately be using some of these to decorate the house!

Instead of making take-home bags full of crappy lollies that no-one likes I've had the grand idea to use them as a template and give each party guest their own lego man t-shirt to take home!

Click on the link (above) and print out your lego template.  Trace around as many of him as you need onto iron on transfer paper (I think it has some fancy name starting with v but it escapes me right now!).

(I am fairly certain I will be sick of Lego men before this party even begins!)

Without cutting them out yet, iron them onto some yellow fabric.  Apparently if you cut them out once you have ironed them onto the fabric you get better edges that dont fray as much after they have been through the wash.

Cut them out nicely, then peel off the backing paper and iron them onto your t-shirts.  I have bought a couple from Best and Less for around $4 each.  Depending on my time I think I might even sew around the edges of each man just to make him a little more secure.

The boys have given their thoughts and determined them to be 'way cool!'  I think so to, so much so I think I might make myself a grown up version to wear on party day!