Attention All LEGO Fans :: LEGO KidsFest is coming to Cincinnati!

I think I have mentioned before that our family has a bit of a LEGO® addiction.  The kids (and sometimes the parents too) love to create & build.  I think LEGO bricks are one of the greatest toys out there (except when I step on one...then I hate them).  They encourage creativity, and build fine motor skills.  In our house playing with LEGO bricks ends up encouraging cooperation and teamwork.  I love them!  So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I heard that I would get to promote the upcoming LEGO KidsFest tour that is coming to town in March.  Our whole family is giddy in anticipation of the big event! 

The LEGO KidsFest is a giant traveling LEGO expo coming to Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Convention Center March 23 - 25, 2012.  It is going to be a Lego-Lover's dream come true!  There will be THREE ACRES of Lego action going on, including:

• LEGO Model Gallery: 40 life-sized models made entirely from LEGO bricks

• LEGO Master Builders: live demonstrations and activities from the crew who get paid to play
• Creation Nation: build your own creation to add to a custom map of the U.S.
• Race Ramps: build your own custom car, then race it down the ramp against friends and family
• LEGO Games Arena: roll the dice to play LEGO board games
• Construction Zones: creative free build, play and display areas
• LEGO DUPLO®: younger visitors can explore imagination through building
• LEGO Retail and KidsFest Marketplace: purchase LEGO merchandise and official KidsFest tour goods
• Brick Pile: a gigantic pile full of LEGO bricks for creative play and enjoyment
• Monochromatic Builds: bricks of a single color to foster group creativity
• Brickscapes: fantastic displays that combine lots of LEGO and DUPLO sets
• And much more, covering over 150,000 square feet of space

My kids are over the moon about going, but I honestly don't think they have any idea of just how very cool this adventure is going to be!  If you have a LEGO Lover in your house, you should not miss this event!  In a few weeks I will be having an awesome giveaway (tickets to LEGO KidsFest!), but in the meantime I have a great special discount code for you if you'd like to get those tickets.

The event will be organized into five sessions – all identical – available for the March 23 – 25 tour stop. LEGO KidsFestLEGOKidsFest.com.

The organizers of LEGO KidsFest have given me a discount code to share for $2 off tickets when you order them online between Feb 17 and March 2. Just enter the code – FamilyFriendly12 – during your check out to save!



You can keep up with all the news about LEGO KidsFest on their facebook page: www.facebook.com/LEGOkidsfest



And stay tuned to the Little Things blog as well for more details & the awesome giveaway!  Also, while we are on the topic of LEGO bricks, if you are looking for ways to organize all those LEGO manuals I wrote a post about how I tackled that project last summer.  And Vicky & Jen "What really matters" blog has a great post about how they organize LEGO bricks.

Disclosure: In exchange for helping spread the word about LEGO KidsFest, organizers have offered me tickets to take the family.  Even if we had not gotten this awesome gift we would still be making a trip to Lego KidsFest though! 

for the love of legos

There is a lego obsession at our home.  It's been going on for several years now.  On any given day you can find my munchkins hanging out at the dining room table creating masterpieces.  Even the babe joins them sometimes, he loves the lego cars and the minifigures.

The kids LOVE minifigures.  Sometimes they won't get the Lego blocks out, they will just play with the people.  Hours and hours of fun with these things!

Sometimes they work together and build great cities.

Or pyramids & pharoahs on camels.

Then there's the Baywatch scenario.

And every good city has a jail for the bad guys, like the Wicked Witch & Dracula.  I'm not sure why the mime is in jail...

They've also made some cool things from the Lego kits.  My favorite thing about the Legos is that somehow they all work together so peacefully when the Legos are out.  They may squabble over lots of other things in life, but Legos bring them together.  And while they are busy creating with Legos Mama has a chance to catch up on bills or empty the dishwasher.

Do your children love Legos?  Do they use the kits or create masterpieces on their own?

Getting Organized :: Lego Instruction Handbook

This summer I am doing my best to take steps to get more organized...in every area of our lives.  Except cleaning.  Still waiting on a house elf for that one.  Some of the changes I'm making are huge, some are tiny, but in the end, they are all helping to make our lives feel a little less chaotic.  I want to share my ideas with you over the summer, in the hopes that you will find inspiration for organizing, or perhaps share some organizing ideas with me in the comments section! 

This week's organizing project is a small one.  I have several Lego-fanatics living in my home.  And with Lego kits come instructions.  I cannot bear to throw them away, because I think that the kids may want to re-build their sets someday.  So I save them.  All of them.  Until today they were crammed on a shelf in the basement.

Messy.  Messy.  Messy.  I know, it shouldn't have bothered me, because it's tucked away in the basement, but every time I looked at this mess I itched to organize it.  Though I must say, the seperate kits are organized neatly into recycled deli meat containers.  This is a great way to store them and keep the pieces safe!  So in order to bring order to the manuals I decided to make a "Lego Handbook". 

I bought a big binder and made a cute little front cover, using stickers from a cool Lego scrapbooking kit I bought on Amazon.  I gathered all of their instructions together:

And I stuck them all in various sized page-protectors.

I put the larger instructions into 8.5x11 plastic page protectors

I used some of my recipe card protectors for the mid-sized instruction books.

I used baseball card protectors are perfect for the mini-instructions.  I had these on hand from my coupon binder, they are also good for that too.  I'm in the midst of a coupon organizing switch though, more on that soon ;)

So there you have it, our new "Lego Handbook".  It's all neat and pretty, and user-friendly.  The kids can find whatever instructions they need without weeding through a huge pile.  My next task is to seperate the binder by category (Star Wars, Bionicle, City, etc). 

And my shelf looks better too.  (forgive poor photo quality, I'm in my dark and gloomy basement closet)

What are your secrets tips for keeping your kids Legos, or any other toys, organized?

this week...

~ ella started reading a book that belonged to her mama when she was a little girl
~ max continued the search for that one elusive lego that always seems to be missing
~ henry came down with a cold that morphed into his first ear infection

~ sam blew bubbles to entertain his daddy while he worked on fixing the truck's brakes

sunday

my fabulous fabric from st. theresa's textile trove (cincinnati)

sam and his legos

michael's curtains

a mid-day snack

legos & sewing

we had the most fabulous sunday yesterday....we stayed in our pajamas all day, except for max, who insisted on wearing pants AND a clip on tie (the casualness of pj day must have bothered him). we spent almost the entire day in the dining room creating masterpieces, and sometimes just relaxing. michael made curtains, i made a surprise baby shower gift (my first attempt in a loooong time at machine sewing) and the kids made wonderful buildings out of legos. ella took a break from all the hard work to have a snack and read a book. and sam just wandered around watching all of the creativity flow.