Built With Kids

Some new Friends

2012-05-26T21:44:00.003-07:00

This weekend we finally had the first Lego Friends set enter our collection. Both girls were excited to build the models themselves, even if they were constantly being referred to as Polly Pocket Lego.

Overall the detail of these models were pretty impressive in my book, but I am a sucker for small models that bring some life to larger scenes/buildings.

The coolest part about these new sets has to be all of the fun new colors entering the palette. I'm especially liking that light blue scene in the flower vase below. I can't wait for these new colors to start making their way into the pick a brick wall.

Oh, and collectible mini-figures are always fun, even if they get turned into a museum piece.

A Pirate Scene

2011-07-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

The 5 year old has lately taken an interest in pirate figures when playing with Lego. That seemed to be the primary driving force in the scenario she created that is documented below.

First, a mermaid holding an umbrella had to make an appearance, along with an alligator.

I'm not really sure the reason for the soldier, although I suspect she doesn't differentiate between him and the pirates since he came with some of them. You may notice in the above picture at the far right and in the following the peg-legged pirate is at the end of the line of the main pirate group. That is because he has a peg leg, so he runs slower. Let's now take a look at what they are running towards.

Err, apparently they are headed to fight a group of Storm Troopers and Mandalorians. Wait, I don't think those guys are normally on the same side...

I also think that one of the Troopers is holding a katana. Frankly, I am finding this all a bit confusing. As for the bystander...

I'm at a loss to explain any further.

The Big Parade

2011-07-04T17:34:00.000-07:00

The long weekend started with building a new Lego house, trying out some new building techniques for the windows and incorporating a nice little side garden by one of our young gardeners. She also added decorative lights over the window.

After building this house, some more came down from the shelf and lined the street. Pretty quickly, in anticipation of Independence Day, a full on parade started to form, being led by a dutiful police officer.

After the horses, the necessary crew showed up as well.

Conveniently a helicopter was available to get an arial shot of the festivities and the gathered crowds.

There might not have been 76 trombones, but it still was a pretty big parade for these little people.

Block People

2011-05-17T18:37:00.001-07:00

During parent-teacher conference tonight, these awesome block people were created by the kids while the grownups talked.

The Girl's Clubhouse

2011-05-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I decided to adapt one of my earlier architecture experiments into the front entrance of a full fortress. Here is a shot of the main level of the structure in which you can see the older columns surrounding the entrance.

One of my favorite aspects of this building is the way I used 1x2 plates with a handle to hold swords for exterior decoration, in addition to jousting spears for flags and shields to add some color.

After finishing the main layer, I made use of some plates to construct a solid roof. Not sure this is my favorite color for the roof, but it isn't bad, and sometimes you have to work with the available parts.

The bulk of this construction occurred while the rest of the family was out of town, hence how I was able to get all of the decorations in place and not have random red or yellow bricks put in the walls by helpers. But shortly after getting home, it was quickly co-opted by the girls to be their new clubhouse.

More and more often, any thing we build at our house gets used by this group of girls, kicking out any boys that may have been there. At least they were nice enough to do some gardening and put in bushes in front of the building.

And for the curious, here is what the building zone looked like mid-construction.

Here comes the Easter Bunny

2011-04-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

Easter is fast approaching our household. After dinner one night, I was asked to help find some parts for a basket, and then to help build a bunny to sit in it. This one was a very collaborative project that we both had a lot of fun building.

Round One ... FIGHT!

2011-04-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

Two esteemed sumo wrestlers have entered the ring and are preparing to spar.

Wait, who is that there with them?

Oh no! It appears the sumo ring was actually an ice skating rink!

The biggest problem with ice skating is of course the risk of injury, often requiring a stretcher.

The above started with a sumo wrestling scene I was working on. It was then turned into a longer narrative by an imaginative child which roughly followed the above plot. Somewhere there was an attempt at building crutches that didn't work too well. I also enjoy the fact that in the Lego universe a female ice skater and a sumo wrestler have identical body compositions.

Architecture Experiments

2011-04-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

I like to make experiments to try new architectural patterns. In my mind these are small tests to see if I think there is any chance of scaling them up to be part of a larger structure. It hasn't happened yet, but I think at least one of these has a chance. This one is an attempt to make an entrance with columns bordering it. I think some contrasting colors may work better for this style.

This second technique, as you can see, I experimented with some different color combinations. I really like the way the lime green turned out, although the other two color patterns are pretty decent as well.

Now to watch the pick a brick wall for a color of 1x1 round plates to stock up on and try to make a larger building...

Samurai At Rest

2011-03-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

The collectible minifigures have been a great source of inspiration by providing scenes for them to live in. I made a quick attempt one night to show the samurai from series 3 outside of his battle armor.

I thought it worked o.k., although my choice of colors for the table and weapon/armor racks could have been a lot better. What was really fun for me though was this kid built table for her snowboarder to relax at.

I'm sure those goblets are full of water...

Under the Helmet

2011-03-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

In the prequel trilogy we found out that all of those clone troopers from Kamino were from the genetic material of none other than Jango Fett.

Like always, they decided it would be better to swap out the heads.

I find the decision to use a female head pretty fun. What really warms my heart though, is that the elder child expressed her preference for yellow Lego heads over the fleshies that the newer licensed sets come with.

Ready to Move Out

2011-03-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

The empire is really getting busy and pulling old troopers out of retirement for their upcoming battle. After some retraining they all seem to be ready for duty. Well, almost...

CMF Series 4

2011-03-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Reports starting hitting late last week that Lego Collectible Minifigures Series 4 were hitting the west coast in Fred Meyer's. One of which happens to be pretty close to our house, so when the kids woke up Saturday morning they found this sitting on the kitchen table.

Normally new sets get tucked away in the closet until a rainy afternoon, but in this case I wanted to confirm we actually had all 16 so I knew whether to watch for any misses or not. The reason I was confirming this is the packages are unlabeled, so I spent time in the store feeling packages late Friday night to try and confirm the contents. I'm guessing I wasn't the first person to do that during the day, as the store clerks trying to restock the shelves only looked at me like I was a bit crazy, not completely off my rocker.

Luckily after 15 minutes of opening bags and assembling, we had the target of all 16, plus a few doubles that the kids were looking forward to playing with. This is one of the easiest ways to stock up on girl figures, which they particularly seem to enjoy playing with.

The kimono girl was probably their favorite, due to her pretty flower dress. It is a pretty cool print, and the fan is a first as far as I know. The kids have good taste.

And the whole crew arranged with giant cups and boxes looming in the background. All around Series 4 is a pretty good arrangement of figures that even if you were to pick randomly would be unlikely to let you down.

A Typical Farmer

2011-03-19T10:35:00.001-07:00

Anyone have a great caption for this shot?

Fun on the Farm

2011-03-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

We really like farms around our house, in addition to liking Lego. That made some of the farm sets from last year really hard to ignore when they were being clearanced this past winter.

The particular set we ended up with was the pig farm and tractor, along with some extra pig farmer and pig sets. Set up, and with some extra visitors on the day we built we had a modest little farm scene.

After a few days on the counter the farm became slightly more elaborate.

You'll see the ostrich was finally contained within the fenced area, and a horse moved in as well. The knight might seem a bit excessive, but with a troll just outside your farm, you need to have protection, and the little dog in the corner just can't outmatch a troll with a club. Best of all is the picnic table in case anyone get's hungry. It's not often you see one of those in a pig sty!

An Airplane

2011-03-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

The little one spent a while one day working very diligently on a plane of her own design. I helped out by placing one or two 1x8 plates on it to provide some stability, but the bulk of the work was hers. After careful construction, an appropriate pilot was selected.

The best part of this project was that upon completion she declared it to be Daddy's plane and was for me to play with.

Furnished Rooms

2011-03-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

One of the presents under our tree this past Christmas was the Lego pink brick box. Included in this box was a book with building ideas that included plenty of furniture. This has inspired several creations, all of which get tucked back into the pink box every time they are played with. Along with a wide range of other parts from basic bricks to swords which I was not aware were considered "girl" Lego.

It is interesting that in our house while there is such a thing as Girl Lego, there are not any that get referred to as Boy Lego. One could assume that means everything that is not Girl is Boy, but I don't think that is the case. Everything else just seems to be Lego.

Lightbox Round 1

2011-03-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

For taking pictures of small objects, a lightbox seemed like it could be useful, and it seemed like a pretty simple project to take a stab at. The kids actually seemed pretty excited about it as well, even though they had no idea what it was before hand. Apparently the name sounds pretty exciting. The first step was to find a box. Thanks to ordering Lego sets on Amazon, that was pretty easy to find.

The one item we needed to buy was a piece of poster board for the interior. That was placed inside it as a continuous curve. After that we placed a plain white sheet around it and put a light overhead. In retrospect a thinner piece of fabric and a brighter light would have worked better, but this worked as a reasonable proof of concept.

The obvious next step was to take some test shots. The first subject chosen by the kids was this hula girl.

This shot of an AT-AT was my favorite of the shoot.

This setup also looked kind of cool when I pulled back a bit. Don't look if you don't want the magic destroyed. But it's not that magical, so I'd go ahead and look.

We used a small enough box that not everything we tried to take shots of really fit, but they were still fun to experiment with.

Maybe next time we'll get a bigger box.

Building Towards Anachronisms

2011-03-03T07:00:00.001-08:00

What you see below is a typical early stage of a build at our house. Those are the contents of set 7571, The Fight for the Dagger freshly freed from their packaging. You might note that the minifigure parts have been divided into two sets at opposite sides of the table to ensure each young builder gets an equal share. Patiently waiting in the middle is a pile of parts for the next stage.

The build itself is a mix of chasing parts from mini MOCs that show up during the main build and moderating turns at adding pieces to the actual build, without losing too many of them to the floor. Typically at the end of, the result is something fun to play with together.

This stage of the play is distinct from the first as it starts to exercise the imagination in a different way. It is usually at this point that other parts and minifigures start making appearances to create very interesting anachronisms. It is tough to say if the white classic space guy doing a Matrix impression, Woody from Toy Story, or the jet ski with a flower growing on it is my favorite addition to this particular Prince of Persia market scene.

We also see an example that princesses are far from helpless in our house. Not only is this princess able to fly, which is obvious since she has a cape, she also wears claws for rescuing others. The box art had her waiting to be rescued by one of the other characters.

And lest anyone thinks little girls are always sweet and innocent, we see a person here who has been turned into "a scary monster guy" with a skeleton face by one daughter. In the meantime her sister decided it was quite appropriate to decapitate the poor axe guard. But what can you expect from a guy carrying two swords on his back while wielding a third?

Pond Scum?

2011-02-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

A while back I purchased some loose leaf tea that required sealed containers to put it in. So I've been washing and reusing old glass jars as they make their way through the kitchen. Normally not a big deal. The last jar however had previously held peanut butter. Turns out even after washing it by hand and the dishwasher the peanut scent persisted. So this was the obvious solution in my mind.

What you see is roughly two infusers of used tea leaves dumped into the jar with water added. After a few days it got nice and murky. The kids found this really fun to swirl around and see how long the leaves took to settle. To the best of our knowledge nothing came to life and invaded the house in this process either. Best of all, it seems like this worked in cleaning out the peanut scent and replacing it with some good old fashioned Market Spice cinnamon goodness.

Valentine's Day Special

2011-02-25T20:02:00.000-08:00

Around our house, Valentine's Day (and other) cards have a tendency to be homemade. Depending on who is doing the giving, this can be due to either really enjoying making cards or not remembering to make one until late the night before and not wanting to go to the store. I won't say which category I tend to fall into...

This year though I did something a little different to go with a handwritten note for the girls. They both seemed to like them, although I think I could have improved the design a bit if I had found some proper slopes to work with.

Flying Saucers

2011-02-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

We dug an old Spyrius 6835 Saucer Scout out of the box of sets we have been working through. On opening the box we realized we didn't have the instructions, but I think we did a pretty good job at this.

Pretty quickly we started digging around in the parts bin and this showed up.

Then things started to get a bit scary when more visitors started arriving.

It seems that we have an invasion on our hands!

Mermaid

2011-02-17T21:16:00.001-08:00

The 5 year old came up with this mermaid design all by herself.

I am a Robot

2011-02-17T07:00:00.001-08:00

We first built the Spyrius Recon Robot (set 6889) as a lazy afternoon build. Both girls seemed to think it was pretty cool judging by the contention over who got to play with it first.

At one point while tired of waiting for her next turn to play with it, the younger one was inspired to build her own robot. The imagination of youth is an amazing thing. I can't wait to see what her creations look like as she gets older.

Cooking Aloo Palak

2011-02-14T07:00:00.001-08:00

One thing the kids enjoy doing is cooking with Dad. It's fun to cook with anyone, but cooking with Dad is a unique adventure. It often involves making a mess and/or playing with kitchen appliances that are normally off limits.

Recently, we attempted making Aloo Palak from this recipe. For those who are unfamiliar, it is an Indian dish consisting of potatoes (aloo) and spinach (palak). The highlight of cooking this meal was getting to run the spice grinder and blender (with appropriate supervision of course). This particular dish involved blending a large amount of freshly cooked spinach and using turmeric when boiling the potatoes. That led to this during the cooking process:

Without a doubt, this was the boldest colored vegetables I have ever prepared. Too bad I didn't add enough ginger and garlic to the dish so the spinach flavor was a bit overpowering. With the addition of chili powder it was decent at least.

Oh, and the kids, they ate something else entirely for dinner. I said it was fun to cook with Dad, not actually eat anything he makes...

Interplanetary Arctic Explorer

2011-02-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

In a large box of sets purchased last summer we had a few Ice Planet 2000 sets. Among them were some small impulse sets that had some neat white wheels for driving around on a snowy planet. It seemed like a good idea to combine as many as we could find onto a single vehicle. From here my helpers dug through the parts looking for interesting white pieces.

We then applied some various shades of translucent blue to give it some color. This particular model made use of many studs and white 1x2 grates. Coincidentally we had just stocked up on those at the Lego store before building this particular creation.

So far the explorer has been unsuccessful at finding alien life, but we are still hopeful it will find success.