kirstencan

Lego Party Redux

Monkey is all about being unique.  He has never wanted to copy anyone else's (including his brother's) party ideas.  However, my party planning mojo was lacking this year, and he wanted too many guests to really pull off the mad scientist theme we'd been talking about for a while.

Finally he agreed that a Lego party would be awesome - especially for his group of friends.  But it wouldn't be exactly like his brother's party back in the day.  It really suits Monkey so well, as he is a SuperFan and aspires to be a Lego designer one day!

Doesn't hurt that we've done this theme before so I knew it would be easy!

He helped me stage the invite photo op.  There was a moment of worry when 'his hair' piece (the one that looks kinda like his mop) couldn't be found immediately.  But it surfaced.

We made minifigure buntings using cardstock and stickers (stickers from this book we already had).

And some cardstock bricks with my circle punch.  Hard to see in this photo.

We made builder badges, and used more minifig stickers on the goody bags.

We displayed some duplo creations that my boys put together.

Cupcakes again, but this time we topped them with chocolate minifigures we made!

As guests arrived, they were pretty occupied with the train setup. 

See how Monkey set up the 'bad guy' so he will get knocked into the bridge?  That was replayed over and over.  Boys. 

We had separated all the wheels we could find from our lego stash and everyone grabbed a pair and started building.  This was the extent of my activity planning. :)

A sheet was spread on the floor instead of using the lego table this time - figured it would work better with more guests.

We setup the 'ramp' again and the boys did test runs and races.

Very casual and open-ended.  It fit the boys different personality types.  Some wanted to build fast and race, some wanted to work forever on their designs and didn't care about racing so much.  Some wanted to just run the races, and some made mars rovers and stuff instead of cars.  Several boys mixed lego with duplo pieces to see how that would go, too.

We had the Lego Movie soundtrack playing (heard 'Everything is Awesome' about a million times, but I kind of love it), Legoland photos on slideshow mode, and Lots of lego books out to peruse.*

Oh yeah, on the mantel was a photo of (little!) Monkey with a mascot at Legoland, and a selection of his mixels, MBA sets, and other things he felt like displaying.

About halfway through, we paused for cake and snacks (chips, grapes, water - pretty low key) and presents.  Then back to building, this time with the Lego Movie on.

Here are just SOME Of the boys' awesome creations:

They had tons of fun, but eventually I kicked them out. :)

We sent them home with goody bags including m&m's (chosen for their color mostly!) with a little Benny tag I made for top.

Also little souvenir photos!  We printed out wallet size photos from our trips to Legoland, and everyone got a few.

I whipped up this cute Lego Movie quote. 

(I think this is the first time we've done photos/prints in goody bags - I hope they go over well!)

Oh, and we made plenty of chocolate minifigs, so some were packaged up for the bags, too.  Some are cookies and creme (thanks, half-price Easter chocolate!).

Some glo bracelets and ring pops rounded out the goody bags.

The boys had fun!  That is the biggest party we've thrown, but I think it went well. 

Two things about 'boy' parties, though:

    You will have to vacuum at least twice.

    There will be a distinct 'boy' smell.

 

*After we were setup, my husband looked around and said "Lego should be paying us."

 

Good thing we finally got those snow tires off...

This was the first year we managed to get snow tires on both vehicles.  And there were about 2 times when I needed them.  All winter!  We finally managed to get them switched out last weekend.

The past few days has been in the 70's.  We're talking shorts, parks, sunblock.  You saw our peach trees blooming (hoping we don't lose our fruit!), and we planted new perennials recently.  And then this.

Well, weather, you are nothing if not unpredictable.

Moleskine + stamps

My new notebooks came, and while I think I have just enough room in my last one for this weekend, I couldn't resist decorating the front of my next one:

Metallic marker + magnetic poetry stamps.  My mom recently found the stamps (brand new) while thrifting (in Seattle - what does your mom bring you back from trips? :) and they're pretty fun. 

As I was trying them out, I made a fridge-poetry type of poem very quickly.

It decided to be an Easter poem.  Light brown ink is hard to read so here it is:

let this family

enjoy our time together

feel the warm peace

share the gift of hope

come fill our happy home

for we celebrate Easter

 

Happy Easter!

Sketchnotes

So I recently got re-interested in 'sketchnoting'.  And I'm loving it!

I started trying to do this with my primary lessons a few years ago.

Sketchnotes just means highlighting the main ideas of a talk/speech/presentation in a graphic (and pleasing) way that will be more meaningful to you.

As a visual person - YES.

I have the book 'Sketchnotes', and it is great for motivation/inspiration.  Mostly interesting to get ideas as to how other people do it.

I've been trying it again while re-reading General Conference talks (LOVED this one!). 

Yeah, that way works for me.  Not only did I get more out of the talk as I read it, but I remember it way better than if I would have just read it AND I am more likely to go back and re-read notes because they look kinda cool.  And I wasn't taking notes so much that I was stressed out trying to record every detail, you know?

I tried taking 'live' notes during a lesson at church.  Again, I got more out of it!

At first I was just using what I had - gel or ball point pens, neon hi-liter.  For my bday, I got some nice highlighters and a micron02 pen.  Like those MUCH better!  Who would have thought I'd have such strong feelings about a grey highlighter... but it's my fave.

Another re-read - trying to get all of October's conference read before this one coming up! I often sketchnote at the library (that is also where I prepare Sunday School lessons) and it's working for me.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the women's session of conference at the conference center.  Instead of filling a page per talk, I filled one page for the whole session.

Not that there weren't as many awesome things said (there were!) but I tried harder (cuz live) to just focus on main points and not worry about filling the space.  By the way, Sister Oscarson killed it last week.  Wow, her talk was amazing.

We had REALLY good seats.

My daughter and her friend tried out sketchnoting as well while we were there.  While my daughter's brain doesn't work anything like mine, she found a way of sketchnoting that worked for her, and is excited to do more of it.

Last week in Sunday School I was talking to my 12yos about General Conference and taking meaningful notes, or finding a way to organize thoughts/impressions they had during the talks.  I am hoping they all try it!

You don't have to have fancy notebooks or pens, you don't have to be able to draw, but I think this method is so amazing, so I thought I'd put this out there if anyone wanted to look it up before this weekend (Easter PLUS conference - yay!).

Sketchbook book and site

Sketchbook army (submission blog)

My fave notebooks are moleskine cahiers (large, plain)

my fave highlighters (except mine is the set with the grey one)

My flickr set of sketchnotes

My notes are meaningful to me now.  They aren't book-worthy or anything ... though I hope I see them look cooler as I practice!