My builder turned 8!

So, my son loves Lego’s. I mean, who doesn’t?! What’s not to love? I wanted to have a big party with friends and presents and themed food and a decorated house and the whole shebang. But, broke single mama here. I imagine many of you who are reading this feel the same way. It’s not easy to make sure your kiddo or kiddos get everything you want them to have. I am truly blessed to have a young one who understands and is always more than thrilled just to spend time with our little family.

I knew I would need at least a cake. You really can’t have a birthday without at least some kind of cake right? I had bought a couple cake mixes from the local Save-A-Lot for about $1. each and a tub of chocolate frosting to cover it with for about another $1.25. So throw in cost of eggs and oil I had about $3 invested in the cake. Cue mixing and baking! I splurged a bit and bought these from Amazon for about $7 each.

 I melted colored chocolate in the microwave and used a spoon to fill in the mold spaces then did a “quick set” by putting them in the freezer for about 3 minutes.

Here is the finished product. It took me 2 hrs from start to finish for this cake. Totally worth it though! He loved it and it tasted wonderful! I think his favorite part was being able to eat the chocolate. They looked good enough he thought they were real legos at first.   

 I did hours of browsing and looking through Lego lots on Ebay and found the bigger one that had 5 lbs of mixed pieces for $35 plus $10 shipping. There were all kinds of odds and ends in there! Regular pieces, special pieces, accessories, and mini figure pieces. He was ecstatic! I also found a box of all red pieces that was $12 and free shipping so I added that in with this birthday bundle. I found others as well and got some great deals but put them aside for Christmas. I thought I had birthday wrapping paper left over from last year but it turns out I didn’t so it was time to get creative again! One of the Ebay vendors had shipped their box using newspaper, mainly the comics section, as packing materials. Since I’m such a pack rat and tend to keep anything I think may be useful at some point in time I was able to dig it up and voila! 

We finished the party off with frozen pizza from Food Lion. 

Aren’t you jealous of how amazing those look?!  Cake was eaten after the pizza of course, and then we are members of the Blizzard club from Dairy Queen and had a buy one get one coupon so off we went to get ice cream! I just want to say that the Salted Caramel truffle is amazing! Plus, we both got an ice cream fix for $5!

Our local movie theater has a “Movie Madness Monday” promo that is awesome. $5.50 for any regular show (non-3D) all day and a free 32 oz popcorn. The kiddo is a big fan of Peter Pan and as most of you are aware Pan came out on Friday. So after Dairy Queen it was off to Walmart to grab a couple drinks and candy from the $1 box bin we all know of to sneak into the theater. So two tickets and popcorn for $11 and candy and drinks another $5. What an amazing movie! Visually stunning. Emotionally captivating and completely gore free! The only blood we saw was from a scratch to Blackbeards cheek.I think the foulest language was the word hell said by Peter himself. Truly a family movie for those who enjoy the Peter Pan story!

Lastly, we had dinner at Bob Evans. We had a birthday coupon so his meal was free and he always drinks water so I didn’t even have to pay for that. My meal total with drink and tip for the waitress was $11.43. Then back home and time for bed! He was a pretty tuckered out kid!

Alright so by my calculations I put about $115.00 total into the whole day. Presents and full day of fun. That’s about as much as a lot of parents spend on just a venue for a birthday party! Granted he just spent the day with me and didn’t have any friends celebrating with him but he and both really enjoy our time together and he most certainly did not complain! All in all I think it was a great success! What do you think? Feel free to leave comments below!