Cars Themed Birthday Party

Happy Monday!

This weekend was extremely busy, filled with drama and laughter all at the same time, and even though there were many fun parts of this weekend...I'm glad for the fresh start that today will bring.

Saturday, my husband and I helped out my brother with throwing our nephew's birthday party. I've mentioned a couple of times on here, but my nephew is a freak for the movie Cars. I would imagine he watches it at least 2 times per week, and even though he has a whole collection of movies to pick from when he gets movie time, it's always Cars or Cars 2.

So when I asked him what he wanted his birthday party theme to be, he told me {yelled at me}, "Cars, of course!" Alrighty then. There were no talking him out of it, even when I reminded him that his last few birthdays have been Cars themed. Mike told me on the way home that every birthday he's ever celebrated with the kid has been Cars themed. So, that's 4 years in a row now. Trust me, it's getting harder to come up with new ideas for Cars birthday parties after all these years {you can see what I did last year with my carhop take on his birthday here}.

I'm bummed that we went to all the work we did and then I forgot my camera at work for the weekend. Thank goodness for my iPhone, but the pictures aren't the best quality.

I made him a Pit Crew t-shirt to wear for the day, with the number 6 for his 6th birthday.

Here's the whole set-up before people arrived. We had some balloons and things around the house also, but we kept it pretty simple. 6 year old boys aren't really into decorations, or I would have loved to go all out and turn the living room & kitchen into a motor speedway! {I should mention, this was the family party. My brother lives too far away from my nephew's school for him to really have friends over to the house. So, Michael was the only one under 21 there.}

Just a few of the details...we turned cream soda & root beer into Rust-eze Medicated Bumper Ointment. We also had "Fillmore's Organic Fuel" tie-dyed labels for water bottles, but do you know how hard it is to take a decent picture of water bottles on an iPhone? Trust me, they didn't turn out pretty.

Here are the cupcakes. I couldn't decide on cupcake toppers, so I did a combination of picks with Mater & Lightening McQueen on them, and then some had racing flags. Most all of the cupcakes had little Cars 2 Squinkies. {Parents, what is the point of Squinkies?? I just don't get how they're fun toys. Do you collect them or something?}

We also made "Pit Passes" for everyone to wear. Michael's job was to greet people at the door and tell them they needed a Pit Pass to come into the speedway where the party was being held. For a bunch of people who haven't actually seen either of the Cars movies, it went over pretty well, and Michael loved deciding who got which character. I'm so mad at myself for not getting a great picture of the Pit Passes on their lanyards, but here's a screenshot I took to send a friend while I was designing them.

These were probably my favorite part of the whole party, and they were so easy to do {they were a last-minute addition on Friday evening}. Everyone had a different character, and like I said, Michael had a blast assigning them to people. It was good for him to have a starting point to interact with people too...he's great at saying hi to people when they first walk in the door, but he often gets distracted with his toys after that. I'm trying to help him continue to be social with people when they visit instead of focusing on playing by himself.

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All in all, it was a really fun party. And I sat down and had a long talk with Michael about how this will be the last Cars party I throw, so he'd better pick a different theme next year. He told me it would be fine to have a Cars 2 party. He's such a smart aleck. I love it!! I have one little project left for him this week, some thank you cards {I'm thinking of making postcards that say "Greetings from Radiator Springs" or something to continue the theme. We'll see what happens.}

I hope everyone has an excellent, happy week! Lord knows I need peace in my life this week, so that's my wish for you as well. :)