My son loves race cars
and monster trucks, so for his birthday party we decided on a race car theme.
This was the cheapest birthday party I have ever planned. I made the
invitations on the computer. I used racing flags on the corners and
inserted a picture of my son, driving his little car and wearing a race car
driver's helmet, in the middle. It said: "Race on over to(last name)Speedway
to celebrate the (name) 300!" To decorate, I used a lot of red, yellow
and blue streamers, as well as balloons. I bought a dozen flags at the Dollar
Store for $2.00
I decorated with
those also. Instead of buying the door decorations at $5.00 a piece, I covered
the front door with cheap black paper and used masking tape to divide the
"road". Then I taped race cars (downloaded from the internet and printed
on colored paper). I used an inexpensive road play mat to cover the
small dining room table and a checkered vinyl table cover for the long patio
table. I tied red, yellow, and blue ballons to the chairs and some
of the cars that were used as center pieces. I collected all of my sons cars
and monster trucks to decorate, since he is not big on sharing yet. I even
used his little people garage to decorate around the cakes, which turn out
really cute. I also used some of my husband's OLD, or should I say "classic"
hot wheels to decorate. We had cars everywhere!
Outside, I used checkered
flags, orange cones (borrowed from a friend), and streamers to decorate.
I kept the activities simple, because we had kids ranging between the ages
of 2 and 12. Older kids started out creating their own license plates.
For this I used construction paper cut using an actual license plate as a
template. I provided glitter, glue, fabric paint, buttons, and miscellaneous
foam shapes. Meanwhile, the younger kids kept busy with a variety of
ride-on toys to choose from. Just in case, I put inexpensive cars in
a bucket by the sandbox, so that kids could play with them as well.
While all the kids were busy, I took each of their pictures, and wrote their
names and "pit pass" on the bottom. I had collected plastic badges from people
in my office, which I used to slip the pictures in, and pin them onto their
shirts.
I wanted the kids to
have a race, but there weren't enough older kids to make teams and the younger
ones didn't understand. The older kids did ask if we could have a race,
since their badges said "pit pas', but they understood... We played
a few other games: pass the car (like hot potato), unwrap the mystery
gift (I wrapped a model car using several layers of tissue paper), pin the
driver on the car (I drew a VW bug on poster board and used my son's picture,
tire toss (used an old tire and kids had to throw a ball into it), and red
light, green light. The prizes for the games were inexpensive cars found
at the Dollar Store. I made a race track cake from a recipe found online.
It was the easiest cake ever and so cute!
I used some of the
inexpensive cars to decorate the cakes and gave them out to the children
as the cake was cut. I found Nascar goodie bags, which I filled with a race
car pencil, a car eraser, a race car notepad, aviator sunglasses, mini oreos
(tires), bubbles, a whistle, and at least two cars. They also took
home a checkered flag, a helium balloon, their pit pass, their picture riding
or sitting by my son's race car, and their license plate. Parents (including
myself) and children had a blast. The party was cheap and easy, since I was
able to find almost everything at the Dollar Store, or make it myself.
