Quick & Easy: Lego Legends of Chima Laval Box

My last post talked about my Ideal Reality vs. Real Reality dilemma involving creating Valentine's boxes for the peeps' elementary school Spring parties (Wow. How First World Problemy does THAT sound?) 

One of the peeps wanted a Lego Legends of Chima Laval box, but I couldn't find a Pinterest idea to steal, which meant my daughter and I had to get creative. If you've read any of my previous blogs, you know that the mere thought of the words "crafty" or "creative" makes me sweat. 

However, we ended up with a pretty decent, not to mention original, box. It took very little time and very little money. Here's how we did it.  


Materials

• Shoe box, any size. (We used a kids sneaker box.)
• Red feathers (1 package)
• White self-adhesive felt (I used one small rectangle.)
• Black self-adhesive felt (I used one small rectangle.)
• Tan felt (as many pieces needed to cover the front, sides and back of box; we used 3)
• Glue
• Black Sharpie
• White paper (to wrap the box first)
• Sparkling gold self-adhesive foam sheets (2)
• Image of Laval's big ol' head for reference.

Create the box!
1. Wrap the shoe box in white paper to hide the original color. (As I'm typing this, I thinking you could probably just go ahead and glue the tan felt to the box and skip the wrapping.)

2. Stand the box on one end and cut a hole for the mouth.

3. Wrap a piece of tan felt around the sides and front of the box; cut the felt around the mouth opening.

4. Turn the gold foam sheet over and draw Laval's crown. Even if you are not an artist, which I am not, the crown is simple to draw.

5. Cut out the crown, remove the backing, and adhere it to the box as shown above.

6. Cut thin strips of black felt and adhere them to the crown to add a bit of definition, as shown above.

7. To create Laval's flaming red mane, adhere red feathers to the sticky side of the crown. Go ahead ... stick those feathers ... as many as you want. It's fun! (Life lesson learned the hard way: Save one red feather per sibling to avoid any potential meltdowns. If one kid has a feather, every kid wants one.)

8. Turn the white felt over and draw Laval's muzzle.

9. Cut out the muzzle and adhere it to the box, as show above; cut the felt around the mouth opening.

10. Cut itty bitty teen weeny teeth from the white felt. Apparently, you need four to make his dental work authentic.  

11. Adhere the itty bitty teen weeny teeth to the inside of Laval's mouth.

12. Cut two white eyes from the felt and adhere them to the box in the appropriate places. 

13. Cut a Laval-shaped nose out of the black felt and adhere it to the face. Again, in the appropriate place.

14. Draw eyebrows and pupils with the black Sharpie. (You could also cut them from the black felt, but I was way over cutting pieces from felt at this point.)

That's it! It took us approximately 45 minutes to create. Maybe less.

Be sure to check out the Lego Legends of Chima birthday party I threw last year! 

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing ... Keep It Real. 

Valentine's Day 2015: Meeting the Expectation

Last year, I wrote about about being completely caught off guard by the elaborate Valentine's boxes my peeps' classmates crafted for the one-hour spring parties. You can read that post here. This year, I was a little more clued in, but offered the girls an option: decorated gift bag or create your own box? At first, they said a gift bag was fine (WAHOO!), but about a week before the party they wanted to create boxes (CRAP!). Each peep had t draw out her plan and write a detailed list of needed supplies ... without my help. The results were pretty amazing, I must say so myself. 

One sweet peep crafted a Minecraft Steve head all by herself. (I cut the slot in the head because I didn't think it was good parenting to let an 8-year-old handle a box cutter.)  The rest was her handiwork, and I thought it was spectacular! 

The uber creative peep wanted to create Laval, the lion from Lego Legends of Chima. her ability to choose projects that no one on Earth has ever attempted never ceases to amaze me, nor does her steadfast faith that mom can make anything happen. 

The child found the one Valentine's box idea that was not on Pinterest. Hooray. So, we brainstormed some ideas, and she drew up a visual. She needed help drawing and cutting, but that's about it. I think it turned out rather nicely. Each box took 30 minutes tops, and we we only had to buy a few supplies. 

Both peeps were thrilled, not to mention proud. 

So, yes, I caved to the school society's Valentine's Day box expectations. In My Ideal Reality, this stuff doesn't matter and I poo-poo this silliness. But in My Real Reality, I know this stuff does matter. I know how important it is for kids to feel included, and if that means making Valentine's boxes, I'll do it. 

But I think I found a happy medium. The girls wanted boxes, and I put the responsibility on them to draw out their ideas, decide what supplies they needed and make as much of the box as possible on their own.  

Now that the party has passed, we're onto the next thing. This morning at breakfast they mentioned the leprechaun. Sigh. (If you didn't read the post link above, that wont' make sense to you.)

To celebrate Valentine's Day, we are headed to a Theatre For Young America performance and an early dinner at The Brick. Then we'll return home and snuggle in because it is going to be a cold one in KC tonight! 

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing ... Keep It Real. And ... Happy Valentine's Day!

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.