Party Fit for a 3-Year Old

I love a good theme for a party. It makes decorating so much more fun. I've always done themes for Adam's parties -- his first was an Airplane theme (my favorite to date) and last year was a Firetruck party (and lucked out with a visit from a real life firetruck!). With Sam's January hospital stay I got behind on planning Adam's third party, but not wanting him to miss out on something now that the new baby was here (yes, I know he wouldn't know the difference), we threw together a party in a matter of days.

What started as a generic Cars/Trucks/Traffic theme morphed into more of a Disney Cars theme / race car theme. Adam's never even seen much of those movies (though he's quite familiar with the characters), but my coworker had a Lightening McQueen cake pan I borrowed, so the party became more about those characters than I originally intended. (I have a "thing" against commercial parties and would prefer more generic themes. I'm sure I'll have to get over this and come to expect more commercial Superhero and Disney themes in my future!) Overall, the decorations were a bit inconsistent since some things were generic traffic ideas and others were Cars and car racing but I'm probably the only one who noticed!

The Invitation:
If you know Adam at all, and especially if you've ever ridden in a car with him, you know he loves traffic lights. Red light! Green light! He's quite the backseat driver. That was my inspiration for the party and, thus, for the party invitation.

To show you the sign of the times, I created this invitation and then saved it to my phone, then text messaged it to all the guests! Times they are a-changing! (This is also helpful for those last-minute plans!)

Decorations:
Streamers, balloons and a little duct tape is pretty much the extent of the decorations. I found checkerboard duct tape (who knew they made so many different designs these days?) and used it along with yellow duct tape and a black table cloth, and we had a raceway on the table!

I was afraid the Lightening McQueen cake wouldn't be enough for everyone at the party, so I repurposed a Doughnut cake pan to make Tire cakes.

Click to enlarge

 I also printed a few road signs and had them around the house (Rest Area, Loading Zone, Congested Area, etc), along with a few Lightening McQueen and friends posters.

Entertainment:
Our options are more limited with the January weather, so our unfurnished basement was the perfect place for activity (and left upstairs fairly quiet for visiting). I brought down all of Adam's trains, cars, car mat and train tracks and let the kids have at it! In case the girls wouldn't want to play with cars and trucks, I also printed out different Cars and Chuggington coloring sheets to further occupy them.

All in all, I think it was a success! And what was wonderful is that all the party guests were cousins! EIGHT cousins came to help celebrate! Oh, you only see six in the pictures? Well, that's because cousins Jake and Lilly took naps and slept through the entire party! But since those two just love birthday parties and cake and ice cream, we had to have a mini party with them when they awoke.

Thank you everyone for sharing his day with us!

And HUGE thanks to my Mom (and the adorable checker flags), sisters and nephews for helping with the last minute decorations, cleaning and photography! I was a crazy woman that last hour before guests arrived!