Toy Car Themed Boys Birthday Party

About a month ago we had a Toy Car themed birthday party for Caspian’s 2nd birthday. As I’ve mentioned before, this little guy absolutely adores cars so his party theme really came as no surprise to anyone. We didn’t have a big 1st birthday party for Mr. C, so we decided to through a bigger bash with 40+ people for his 2nd birthday. Usually when we have a lot of people at our parties, we like to host outdoors, but because it was so hot and humid, we opted for inside our cottage which meant it was quite the cozy party.

Here is a picture of the birthday boy and his birthday outfit that I made for him…….complete with car pockets on the side for carrying all his hot wheels. You can read more about his birthday outfit by clicking HERE. The whole party decor was based around this adorable fabric from Riley Blake Designs. It always helps me to have fabric as inspiration. It makes picking out the party colors, balloons and decor so much easier.

I bought this big ‘C’ metal sign at Hobby Lobby. I thought it was perfect for ‘Caspian’ and for the word ‘Car’. And it matches his room decor so I knew it would be used after the party which is always a great bonus. I had purchased this heavy metal crate at the flea market about a year or so ago. I bought it because it just looked really unique and I thought it would be great for pictures. We actually used this for some of the shots in my book. I flipped the crate upside down and used it as the anchor center-piece of the dining room table. I liked how industrial it looked………and it just kind of shouted ‘car’ to me.

I got this metal Stop sign at Hobby Lobby as well. It was only $4.00 and I just leaned up against the metal crate to add some layers to the center table decoration.

I used my Silhouette machine to cut out these car shapes. You can’t really tell in this picture, but we have four white plates up towards the top of our dining room, so I put a car on each plate in colors that coordinated with the car fabric in Caspian’s outfit.

I also found this cute wooden car sign at Hobby Lobby.Who knew Hobby Lobby had so much stuff in the car department? (And no, they did not pay me to promote them…….apparently I just really love Hobby Lobby right now). I just rested the sign in front of some pictures on the mantel of our fireplace.

I usually focus on one room in the house when it comes to party decor, but because we were having so many guests, I knew we would have people everywhere. I made  a banner out of coordinating fabric attached to red rickrack and hung it over the entrance from our family room into the sunroom. We also had a matching one in the dining room.

For me, the food is the main focal point of the party. I absolutely love planning a party menu. It always gets a little tricky when you are feeding a crowd and a lot of our family and friends travel far to attend the kids parties so I always want to make sure I don’t spend the whole time in the kitchen. I’m a big fan of ‘do ahead’ types of food when it comes to parties. For the table covering, I used a red tablecloth that I already had and then ran a strip of black wrapping paper down the center of the table to mimic a road.

I bought some chocolate covered donuts and called them ‘Spare Tires’. They were a huge hit with the kids! I made these labels in different shapes on my Silhouette cutting machine and used my label maker for the text on the labels.

For lunch we served sandwiches that we made ahead of time on french rolls (a big thanks to my mom for helping me assemble these). We did Italian and provolone, turkey and colby jack and roast beef and provolone all with some organic spring baby greens.

We also bought some horseradish mustard and chipotle mustard as additional condiments to put on the sandwiches. They turned out really yummy and were so easy for 40+ people to grab and eat. We served PB & J on whole wheat for the little kids. The utensils were all available in glass mason jars and we had red napkins as well.

We served several side dishes such as chips, vegetables and dip as well as this cranberry coleslaw with poppyseed dressing.

I made a pasta salad with marinated veggies, olives and artichoke hearts. I really wanted to make the pasta salad with wagon wheel shaped pasta to go along with our car theme, but after going to three stores and not being able to find any, I settled for a different shape.

I made ‘Stoplight Fruit Skewers’. They were red, yellow and green just like a stoplight. We used a grape, pineapple and strawberry, but you could certainly change up the fruit if you prefer different kinds of fruit. Kiwi would be fun too!

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t really bake. I mean I do brownies, cookies, pies, ect…….but not the kind of baking that involves seriously intricate decorating. No. thank. you. I love to cook, so I try to focus on that and we usually buy a cake from a local bakery when it comes to the cake. I really wanted just a generic ‘car’ themed cake, but the bakery didn’t seem to have one, so we went with this ‘Cars the movie’ themed cake. Caspian has never seen the movie, but he liked all the figurines on top of the cake.

For the party favors, I bagged up a few little goodies for the kids including some tootsie rolls and hot wheels cars. We also gave out these cars that you can shoot across the floor. They are so much fun!

So that’s a little bit about Caspian’s Toy Car Themed 2nd Birthday Party! I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I always love sharing with you guys. Have a great day!