Race Car Themed Party for a 5 Year Old

The other day, I blinked and my sweet little baby boy turned 5. How did that happen so fast? Candidly, his birthdays always make me sad because they mean he is another year farther away from the tiny cooing baby that I used to snuggle. He used to be this itty-bitty squishy little thing and now he is almost as tall as me, learning to read and always pontificating amazing facts I had no idea he knew. Mixed feelings for sure!

As sad as his birthdays make me, I like to celebrate them because I like to celebrate him and how awesome he is. When I asked him what he would like the theme for his party to be this year it came as no surprise that his answer was cars. This kid is automobile obsessed. Race cars, monster trucks, exotic cars, tow trucks, tractors, trains; if it has wheels, he loves it! So, knowing his request, I set about to put together the most car-tastic car themed party that I could without blowing the budget.

Here is what I came up with…with some inspiration from Pinterest of course. 📌

I got all of the decorations and supplies from the dollar store or from leftover decorations I already had on hand. I used black and white crepe paper to mimic the checkered flags they have at races. I also found a colorful ‘Happy Birthday’ banner that I hung on the mirror which can be reused at another birthday party.

I covered the table a with a black dollar store tablecloth (easy cleanup) and then put a strip of checkered duck tape down the middle to create a “road” for some race cars. These traffic cones are from the dollar store too. They where 2 for a buck so I bought 4 sets. I figured they would be a cute table decoration and then my son could use them later on to play soccer outside with his dad or race through with his bike or whatever his brilliant little mind comes up with.

I continued the theme with the food and used my car save husband to help me come up with clever auto related names for the snacks. We had the “2018 Fruit Cup” which included Apple cars with grape wheels. There was also “Jeff Gordon’s Guacamole”, “Dodge Viper Veggies”, “Mario Andretti’s Pizza”, and my personal favorite “Spare Tires” aka Oreo’s aka my favorite cookie in the whole world…which btw I didn’t get to eat any of at the party because in an attempt to reduce my own “spare tire” I decided to go on the Whole 30 program for the month of January. WTH was I thinking? Oh well, I digress, moving on.

I used the remainder of the black tablecloth on the buffet and added checkered duck-tape to create a border. This is where we put the drinks, cake and utensils. I still can’t get over how cute the little safety cones ended up looking. Best $4 I’ve ever spent.

We created a “fueling station” with a galvanized bucket I already had which we filled with apple juice bottles and the crowd favorite, coconut LaCroix. I took the labels off the apple juice bottles and then wrapped them with the checkered duck-tape. Just in case people weren’t sure yet that this indeed was a race-car themed party.

To save time I made simple box-mix cupcakes with ready-made frosting. To spruce them up I sprinkled crushed up Oreo’s on top to be a road and used the Oreo filing to create the centerline. I used the excess batter to make a small cake for the birthday boy, which I decorated in the same way with the addition of green frosting for grass and of course a corvette. I arranged the rest of the cupcakes as a 5 and topped one of them with a car as well. All told this was far easier than making a big sheet cake and made for the perfect amount chocolate deliciousness without having a ton of leftovers.

For games and decorations we created a hot wheels race track and a photo booth. We built a little race track with my son’s hot wheels toys and I filled some buckets I had on hand with his extensive collection of cars. I then cut out red, yellow and green felt circles to look like a stop light and used foam letters above it to say “ready, set, go!”

I asked my hubby to create a big car to use as a photo booth and he came up with this awesomeness. He just cut up and attached some of our endless supply of amazon boxes together with duck tape, spray painted it and made lights on the front with duck and electrical tape. I love how he positioned the little amazon smile right in the center. Here is to super-duper creative and handy husbands, am I right?

I decorated the wall with more dollar store finds including a tassel banner, red car decals and two felt pennants that I attached sticky foam letters to that said “zoom” and “vroom”. It created quite the cute little photo-op area and the kids seemed to enjoy playing in it as well.  In fact 4 days post party,  it’s still sitting in the playroom transporting my kiddos to “Mimi & Pappy’s house”, “ballet class” and “Texas”.

To finish everything off I filled a little basket with dollar store party favors (coloring book, slinky, race car and stickers) and put a little sign next to it that said “for the road”. I also made sure to appropriately label the “pit stop” in our house, cause when you gotta go, you gotta go, no time to ask for directions.

So, that’s what I came up with to throw our little guy a car themed party. I had a lot of fun planning, decorating and seeing it come together. I was able to do it with very minimal stress or effort (exactly how a party should be). It was low-key, fun, cute and M had a blast with his friends. We sent out thank you notes afterwords with the above picture on them and the birthday boy even helped out in writing them.

Now I need to get busy thinking up ideas for my 2 year olds 3rd Birthday. Wonder if I could get her into cars between now and then and just reuse this theme? Have you been to or thrown a party with a really cool theme? Let me know in the comments! I need all the help I can get 😉

❤️Brenna

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