Monday, March 19, 2012

Jack's Cars Second Birthday

Our little man Jack turned two in early March and we threw him a themed birthday party featuring one of his favorite things of the moment, Cars. I've been working on this party on and off since Christmas and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I wanted to do a red with black & white check theme using a free clip art car that I found online. I shopped sales, used coupons, and picked up items at the Dollar Tree to make this work on as economically as I could.
I practiced for a few weeks making a few different layer cakes before making Jack's. It was drier than I would've liked, but it looked good and fit the motif. The stoplight cookies were my favorite sugar cookie/icing recipe.

One of Jack's favorite gifts was a goalie set from our neighbors, who are a hockey family. Jack loved it.
One of the biggest projects for this party was 2-Town, a big number two that was a place for the kids to drive their cars. You can't see the bridge that Jack is driving his car on in this picture, but it was the most popular part of the project. There was a baseball diamond of purled yarn for grass and sandpaper for the dirt. I used spray painted butter cartons and creamer cartons to create buildings and garages. Colored, wrinkled aluminum foil with fish became a river and glued rocks became an off-road. A tub of marbles was our pool and a small container with blue play-doh in the middle of the rotary was our fountain. 2-Town is now in our basement where Jack sometimes plays with it.




On the head table, I found a great piece of plywood for $1 in the Home Depot reject pile. I covered it with wrapping paper that I found at the Dollar Tree. I made all the graphic elements on my computer and printed them out at home. I made the trays by wrapping gift boxes with red paper and decorating w/the checked fabric I found at JoAnns. I was surprised to discover I couldn't find checked wrapping paper ANYWHERE. I thought that would be super-easy to help with my theme.



I wanted the party to have a few healthy options, so I featured a Dipstick Station with pretzels, mini-corn dogs, pretzels, carrots, and snap peas along with dips of hummus, ranch, and honey mustard.
I used a barely used storage toolbox part for a "spare parts" of little snacks for the kids. I used formula cans wrapped in wrapping paper to make it look more like a "toolbox," The cans were fixed with oreos, chex, goldfish, strawberries, twizzlers, Swedish fish, and blueberries.



I put labels on the juice and water bottles. While the kids played with 2-town, I had a car quiz for the adults with questions like 'what number was on Herbie the Lovebug' and 'what car did Prince sing about?' The winner got a set of spare tires...also known as oreos.



Favors were Pez Cars dispensers I found on sale at Walmart:










Plans are already underway for Evie's first birthday party. So many possibilities and only six and a half months to plan! I've already changed the theme three times.... so we'll see what it becomes.



1 comment:

karlyn, troy, and bryson said...

Happy Birthday to the little man!! Love you! :)