Unleash the Power: How to Host The Ultimate Lego Legends of Chima Birthday Bash

Image from www.gamedynamo.com

Two of my favorite people in the universe turned 7 yesterday! Yep, my twin baby girls are growing up. We hosted a Lego Legends of Chima birthday party for a few of their closest friends (translation: the friends they happened to be interacting with on the day I asked who they would like to invite). They invited five friends each. We ended up with 9 8 kiddos (keep reading). I implemented the Five-Friends Rule after 20 kindergartners showed up for last year's Harry Potter/Unicorn party. Only one invited kid was a a no-show. So much for the 25% rule.

Thankfully, the peeps agreed on this year's theme. Unthankfully (?) Legends of Chima party paraphernalia is tough to find, so my non-crafty self had to get creative. I found a few ideas on Etsy and Pinterest, but ultimately decided to wing it. Here’s what I came up with.

Invites:

• I posed a Laval figure (I used a Laval-shaped pen) next to a number “7” created with some Legos I found in random places around the house. I snapped a photo and inserted it into a Microsoft Publisher invitation template. Staples printed them in color on white card stock, and I had enough spare envelopes for mailing.

Homemade invite

Food:

• Fruit tray
• Cheese cubes
• Jelly Belly's in Chima colors (red, blue, yellow/gold)
• Capri Sun (Pacific Cooler blue)
• Cake balls. One of the main elements of Legends of Chima is CHI, which is orb-shaped. I brief moment of craziness, thought about making these myself, but decided to let Hy-Vee help me out. I ordered 2 dozen; ½ chocolate and ½ vanilla with red, blue and yellow sprinkles. Yum.

Cake Balls! 

More Cake Balls! (I just like saying Cake Balls. Try it!)

Activities:

• Chima coloring pages from the party kit on the Lego web site and a honkin’ bucket of crayons kept party-goers busy while we waited on everyone to arrive.
• Chima video (20 min). We had some technical difficulties at first, so we played a few kid-friendly music videos, such as “What Does the Fox Say.” (Ok, so that one may or may not be kid-friendly. I’m not sure.)
• Pin the CHI on Laval or Eris. I drew the characters on some foam board and made CHI out of card stock. If I can draw these characters, you can. Seriously. Laval turned out really well; Eris is a little beefy. 

Pin the CHI on Laval or Eris

• Chima version of Hot Potato. I called it Hot CHI, which sounds a little naughty, but we went with it. It got a tad out of control, what with 8 kids whacked out on Jelly Belly’s and cake balls. We used a small blue ball (CHI) and Pandora music set to a children’s channel.

Decorations:

• Tablecloths. I had blue and yellow on hand. Perfect Chima colors.
• Paper plates and napkins. I found gold on sale at Michael’s.
• Paper lanterns in royal blue and yellow. Party City has packs of three 9-in lanterns.
• Waterfall. Another central piece of Chima. I created a crepe paper waterfall with some royal blue streamers. It turned out sort of lame, but the kids loved it.  
• Balloons. No party is complete without them.

The kids loved the lanterns!

Lame Chima Waterfall

Party favors:

• Bags. We had blue lunch sacks on hand from the summer. Perfect!
• Giant gumballs. Yep. I sugared those kiddos up at the party and sent them home with more. Each bag contained three gumballs (two blue, one yellow).
• Chima character necklaces. This was a bit of a splurged. I found a set of 20 homemade Chima-themed necklaces on Ebay that are pretty awesome.
• Stickers. I found a Lego Chima sticker book at Wal-Mart. It is the ultimate, with more than 1,000 stickers. I put a few inside each bag and decorated the outside with more. Bonus: There were still tons left over for my peeps to fight over, not to mention stick to every surface with which they come in contact over the next few days/weeks/years.
• Blue glass beads. CHI, baby. Paired with the gumballs, I’m anxiously waiting for parents to thank me.   

Blue lunch sacks made the perfect Chima party favor bags!

I must say, I was feeling pretty good about my party-creatin' skillz. We totally Unleashed the Power!

As for our attendance dropping by one, one our sweet friends threw up within 10 minutes of arriving at the party, so she had to leave. On top of that, one of my own peeps raced out of the party in tears. I guess what they say is true, “It’s not a party until someone barfs or cries.” We scored both! It made me a little nostalgic for my college years.

Are any of these ideas useful? Or did you create your own ultimate Legends of Chima party? Share please!

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing … Keep It Real.