Lego birthday party favors! Only $2.25 per kid!!

Every year I try to think of something fun (and inexpensive!) to do for my kid's birthday party. Last year I did these super labor intensive magnetic poetry kits. It was a very cost effective idea, and I do love a creative challenge, but ideally I would not be spending that much time on stuff like this. The year before I did cute, little notepads. Those were simple to make and came out really great. This year, however, I think I REALLY outdid myself with fun little Lego kits. 

We started out by going to the Lego store with the intent of creating a little creature, or robot or vehicle or something out of the Legos they had available on their wall of single, loose, bulk pieces. In no time Finn whipped up a crazy little duck-like robot. We collected enough pieces to build 10 identical creatures, one for each party guest, and managed to fit all the pieces into the larger sized bulk bucket ($15).

 

Using my "just-enough-to-get-by" Photoshop skills I whipped up an instruction sheet on how to build these guys and we sorted all the pieces into take-out boxes that I got at Michaels.

The take-out boxes were $3.89 (yay for 40% off coupons!) and I had a whopping bill of $3.85 from the local print shop to get the instructions and the sheet of names and eyes printed up. My total cost for these favor boxes was $22.74, divided by ten kids makes it about $2.27 per kid and the best part was that the kids loved them!

Robot Paper Dolls!

I have always loved paper dolls and thought it would be fun to change it up a little - with robots!

Supplies needed

Good, sharp scissors

Bone folder (not totally necessary, but good for making nice, sharp folds.

Tiny hole punch (again, not totally necessary, but makes great details like eyes and buttons

An assortment of fun papers (I used some old wrapping paper, kraft paper, graph paper and a bright colored printer paper. (Be sure to trim all the papers to 8.5 x 11 if they're not standard printer size)

First you'll use my handy dandy template to print the guidelines onto the backs of your papers. Next cut along the dashed lines and accordion fold on the vertical guidelines. Carefully snip around the outline of the robot, the mouth and chest piece. Next punch out the eyes and buttons and then carefully unfold and flatten! A little bit of tape behind the hands can string these little buddies together. Hope you like them!