Zoom Zoom - A Race Car Party

My little guy will turn one tomorrow. We`ll park my disbelief aside for the moment while we take a little run through the Race Car Party we held for him on the weekend. With his daddy being a Mopar enthusiast (ahem, insert understatement), I figured a car-themed party was the way to go. I also knew I wanted to use the vintage-style formula 1 car he got for Christmas as part of the decor, so a racecar theme quickly emerged.

To kick things off, I whipped up a simple e-vite for our families and close friends using a picture of him with his vintage-style car. The colours I used started with the silver, black, and white of the car and I added in red for a nice pop. Insert a checkered border, a couple of checkered flags and a few racecar words and it was done!

I then spent a little time searching around Pinterest and party blogs to pull together the party day decor. In my online travels I spied some really awesome all-out car parties, some including build-a-racecar, actual racetrack races, and remote-controlled car fun! With our party being mostly adults (we kept it to our families and a few close friends), I skipped most of that, but did pull together bits and pieces of inspiration from various places to create a fun little event fit for a one-year old.

Here`s the main event (aka food table!) before the food was placed:

I hung the streamers on a large picture frame, now nicely hidden behind them and draped the table with a black plastic tablecloth. I had planned to tape white dashes down the centre to resemble a road, but realized that once all the food went on you wouldn`t see it and I saved myself the effort. I also had plans of using bunches of white, red and silver balloons on either side instead of those birthday ones, but the weather foiled my plans so to speak. With the snowstorm coming on Saturday, I couldn't guarantee I'd get out to get the latex ones filled with helium and they wouldn't last from Friday until Sunday. So I went with the foil ones instead, which are guaranteed to last for days. I tried to find plain coloured ones, but no luck. Oh well, I don't think anyone noticed (or cared!). I anchored those to a couple of wheels from Hudson's sleigh/wagon to keep with the theme.
I did put in the effort on the handmade pennant banner though. I used red, black, grey/silver papers from my scrapbook stash for the triangles. I punched holes in the corners and strung those on some black ribbon and added sparkly silver letters. I think it turned out nicely.

I also made up a few race car-themed signs to place on the table and in other areas of the house. I printed the words out on white card stock with a checkered border then mounted that on red or black cardstock. The food table became "The Pit Stop", the refreshment table became the "Refueling Station" and all the food had special names too, from Speedway Soup to Finish Line Fruit to Racetrack Chili.

With only four little boys on the guest list, I skipped formal party games, but put out some crayons and race car colouring sheets in "The Body Shop" and piled all the toys together in the "Junk Yard".

I put up some photos of HP from the past year, including a display of him with/by various and sundry cars. Again, with his daddy a musclecar fan(atic), we have our fair share of these!

I also displayed his 11 monthly photos from the year. I printed them in black and white, strung them up with mini-binder clips and added a few streamers and balloons for fun.

And of course, what's a birthday party without the cake? Thankfully my mama is cake-baker-maker extraordinaire and willingly obliged my request for a racetrack cake. I loved it! Looks great, eh?

And that little pin and birthday hat he's sporting were also my handmade creations:

For the pin, I used leftover bits from the banner. First I cut a 12" long strip and folded it accordion style, shaped it into a circle and glued the ends together. I topped it off with a punched scallop circle, another smaller circle, and the number one. On the back I added a small felt circle with some hot glue, then glued the ribbon strips to that and covered them up with another felt circle. I couldn't find a hat in the colours I liked, so I bought a silver one that had blue glitter words, blue tassels and a blue tinsel-like thing around the bottom. I stripped all that blue stuff off and replaced it with a red washi tape trim, red stickles for the words, and some trimmed black tissue paper for the top. Now it was race car party ready and suitable for my boy.

Finally, there had to be loot bags for the littles that came. I stuffed baggies with goldfish, juice boxes, chocolate easter eggs and a hot wheels car. I added a simple topper with race flags and more racing words to finish it all off.

All in all, it was a Indy-fast afternoon filled with Hudson Peter's biggest fans!