Home Made Advent Calendar

Greetings ninjas!  I just got done making an advent calendar for my daughter.  It might sound a bit daunting to make one, but it was not as hard or expensive as I thought. Here are a few ideas to remember:

Lots of Minifigures:
It might seem tough to come with 24 separate gifts, but minifigures are a good place to start.  The Double Decker couch is a great value for that.  You get 5 of them, all main characters from the movie, and you get the couch and a small car. Its even on sale right now too!  You might also try the Batman and Angry Kitty set. This is also on sale. You get three minifigures, including a Batman and Uni Kitty variant, plus a micro manager for less than ten dollars. If you break them up into one small present per day, that's respectively 7 or 4 days worth of presents.

Some people don't like fake me outs, but your kids won't notice and they are a good way to expand your options for a small amount of money. For example, you can find a set of 24 DC and Marvel comic Lego (like) figures for 16 dollars. You might also try the build your own minifigure station at the Lego Store.  This lets you build three minifigures for 9.99. The advantage of this is that you can build something rather specialized.

Of course, you can't forget to check yard sales! I found the 5 minifigures below for a very good price. I paid 10 dollars for all of those figures, when just one Pharaoh is worth that price on Ebay!

  

Storage: 

Most families have a giant pile of Legos in storage.  The first option is to build something with that useless pile, and present that as a gift. Or you can take a bunch of pieces you think are good for building and make them a present.  You might also do a combination of both and in the picture you can see I made a snow flake stand for Anna.  I then took it apart slightly and then bagged it.  This option doesn't cost you any money, just a bit of time!

If you're not that creative don't worry, I'm not either, you might try to find instructions and sets online.  I found a very good reindeer and I could tell my daughter its Sven. The free montly Lego magazine has some instructions. This months' included a Christmas tree and basic reindeer.

Themed Candy:  

You'll also notice the picture includes some rock candy that looks like ice. I thought it was a great treat to go with all of her Legos.  I found a bag of rock candy online for about 5 dollars. This was a great low cost purchase and it ended up being 3 days worth of presents.  Of course, if you aren't that creative you can get some molds at a very good price. Then you can make jello, chocolate, and crayons in the shape of Lego men or bricks. 

Accessorize: 

If you read this blog regularly, you already know I love to pimp out my Legos. Along with your boxes of old Legos pieces you probably have a bunch of boring, faded minifigures from the 80s. You can buy some cool accessories that turn them into a Viking, Roman, gladiator (pictured above), space marine, or desperado.  Brick Forge is having a great sale on blind bags right now. You can get 10 minifigure parts in a bag that normally costs 3 dollars.  With the buy one get one free you get 20 parts for 3 dollars. (Plus a few dollars for shipping.) Its kind of blind luck on what you get, but you should get a good variety of pieces to spice up several of your Lego men. For comparison, buying the swords, armor, and helmet for that gladiator costs about 5 dollars on its own. So its a great deal.    

I also found a nice head of Anubis on Ebay. It was only 2 dollars, combined with some weapons and shipping I only spent about 8 dollars to get a very unique Lego. I used one of the torsos and feet from the evil foot soldiers in Guardians of the Galaxy and now its going to be one of the awesome parts of her collection. It goes really good with the Pharaoh I already have, and the Egyptian Queen I got as well. (My daughter is really liking Egyptian themed items right now. I blame Scooby Doo.) 

Here you'll see the final product, where I have a Pharaoh, Cleopatra, and Anubis ready for wrapping: 

Deals!!! 

As always, pay attention to deals.  I regularly highlight them on this blog.  One of the best I found was the old Mixel series that went on sale for one dollar!!!! This was an insane deal and I literally grabbed as much as I could carry.  For the calendar I mostly used Series 4 flying blue creatures. Keeping with the Frozen theme as much as possible I sold it to my daughter as Elsa's flying monkeys.  (She loves Wicked too so I thought she would understand it.) 

Use your Christmas Purchases: 

This method is somewhat different from finding good deals. This lets you buy your purchases like normal. Then you can divide up the pieces from the purchase.  Most 40 dollar sets have about 400 pieces and 5 minifigures. You can give them the minifigures once per day, and divide the pieces into small chunks.  Your child then builds whatever they can using the pieces they have and try to guess what the final product is.  Then on the last day you give them the instructions and they can see how well they guessed and then build the product as intended.  

So there you have it.  The normal advent calendars cost between 30 and 40 dollars (or even more if you wait until the end of November.) With some time, effort, and careful planning you can easily produce a calendar and all 24 gifts for far less than that. It will mean even more since you made the gifts very thoughtfully.  Of course, it will also be way more special. I showed my daughter that last picture and she was practically giddy.  As always, like me on facebook to receive the latest updates. Good luck ninjas!! 

37% Off Guardians of the Galaxy

Greetings ninjas! I just discussed how you can get good deals if you are willing to wait a little bit.  The Guardian of the Galaxy sets are over a year old but they're being retired and now they're on sale.


 

You have some options here. The biggest set is 26% off. You get the Milano space ship, plus Star Lord, Drax, Gomora, and Ronan.  That is 4 main characters plus an extra evil foot soldier, and you get two space ships.

The next set is Nowhere escape. I already paid full price for this one (I was still earning my ninja stars back then) but now its 10 dollars or 26% off!. The real draw for this one of course is the Rocket Raccoon and Groot figures.  Unless you got the small polybag, the Rocket Raccoon figure is very hard to get! You also get Nebula (or the evil blue chick as I call her) and a foot soldier. It might not seem like it, but that little flying ship is actually pretty cool. It has nice colors and sticker prints.  I thought it was a bit overprice at 39.99, but 29 is a good value.

I'll likely buy the last set. Its normally 19.99 but its 37% off and selling for 12.59 right now!  This is about the same cost as many army builder sets. Here you would get Star Lord and both a good guy and bad guy foot soldier.  Three minifigures and two small space ships is a pretty good value for this set.

This is a great chance to get your kids some cool discounted sets for Christmas!  Mine loves Chris Pratt, so now I'll be able to get her another one of his Lego figures. (Emmett from the Lego Movie and his Jurassic World character are the other two!!) As usual, with Amazon you get some other perks as well. With Amazon prime you get free shipping. And this is way before Christmas so you can safely choose no rush shipping and get a dollar credit on ebooks and music.

Good luck ninjas! As always, like me on facebook to stay updated with the most current news.  For example, today there are two free Lego events!!

How to save 40% at the Lego Store

Greetings ninjas! Christmas is coming up very soon and I thought I should talk strategy. It might seem odd to discuss Christmas in October, but there are several important deals right now, that might it vital to discuss this early.  What follows if a short guide in how to maximize your money during the Christmas season.

Double Points: 

I mentioned earlier how you can start to rack up coupons during double points months.  The Lego store offers a VIP card that gives you a 5 dollar coupon for every 100 dollars you spend.  During double points months, you get a 5 dollar coupon for every 50 dollars you spend. That might not sound like a high amount, but Legos can add up quickly. One of my favorites is the Temple of Arijitzu. It costs 200 dollars. If I bought that during the double points months that give me 20 dollars of coupons!! Double points ends this month on the 14^th!

Add ons:

On top of that, if you are going to spend that kind of money, you should shop during the special holiday promotions.  Last year I got a great Elf Workshop when I bought 99 dollars or more of products.  This year they have an adorable red train.  Again, if you have multiple kids, or even one kid that wants a mid priced set, you can easily reach 100 dollars.  If you are spending that money anyway you can time it so you also get a great Christmas themed item.  This item is only available from the 13^th of October to the 13^th of November.  So you’ll want to shop on the 13^th or 14^th of October so you get double points and the holiday train!!  

Investment Items:

Maybe you don’t have any big ticket items on your list. You can still buy advent calendars in October and resell them around Thanksgiving. (Don't tell the Lego store employees you plan on doing that. They don't like it.) Most people don’t realize until its too late that advent calendars sell out by late October so there is a good market for these. The Star Wars version is particularly popular.  Last year me and my daughter got a great Darth Vader with red trim and a red cape, as well as an R2D2 dressed like a Christmas tree. These are great for your kids, but they also make great investment items.  Last year right around Thanksgiving (right before the advent month starts) they were selling for about 10-20 dollars higher than their sticker price. (Last year's LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 75056 is selling for almost double its original price).  So you can purchase a calendar in October, get the free holiday train set , and double vip points for the purchase, and then turn around a month later and recoup all of your money and even make a little profit.  To a lesser extant you can do this with the minifigures as well. These are highly specialized figures that come in blind bags and cost 4 dollars each. If you need to reach 100 dollars to get the promo you can buy a few of these and open them to see what they are, and then resell them. If you're ambitious might also like to keep them for a home made advent calendar.  On top of that, they are Halloween themed. So if you decide to keep them you get some cool monster themed Legos you can pull out every year.

Adding it up:

In short, you can easily get the holiday promotion and rack up coupons without spending that much money.  The Star Wars Advent Calendar is 40 dollars, your families Christmas presents are another 40 dollars, and you get 5 minifigures for 20 dollars which gets you up to 100 dollars, plus tax that would be about 107 dollars.

But if you sell back the advent calendar for a small profit (about 50 dollars would be a safe assumption) and two of the minifigures you don’t want (at cost) you’ll get around 58 dollars back. You will also get 10 dollars in coupons for purchasing during a double points period.  And you’ll get a train set worth 15 dollars. If you don’t sell the train set that means you got 67 dollars (115 for the total worth of your products, minus the 48 dollars at cost of the products you sold back) of Lego products for only spending about 39 dollars!!!! (107 dollars spent minus the 58 you sold them for and 10 dollars of coupons)  That is close to 40% off!!!!! 

Plus, you’ll be getting money into your account right around the start of December which is always nice for buying some more presents or those lousy fundraisers your kids have. I don’t know if you’re like me, but getting extra money into account feels like new money, even if you’re just getting back what you just spent.  So it’s a nice psychological boost when you need it. 

You’ll have to do a little bit of work.  Though making a trip to the store, selling on ebay, and dropping off a package aren’t terribly difficult actions.  And if you’re reading this blog you likely have the motivation to save money and see the effort as very worth it.  You can get some Christmas presents, a nice Christmas Lego you can use year after year, some Halloween Legos you can use year after year, you get some coupons for more Legos, and you can help somebody out who is panicking about an advent calendar at the start of December. And you can do all of this for 40% off at a total cost of 39 dollars and some time spent!  Ninja level achieved!  As always, make sure to follow me on facebook for the most current updates.  For example, there is a free giveaway at Toys R Us this Saturday.