Birthday Party Decor

Part of the fun in planning a theme party is coming up with the decorations.  Race cars is a simple enough theme, but some aspects of the decor were tricky because most 'race car' party stuff out there is all tied into the Disney Cars movie.  I wanted Sebastian to have a special birthday shirt and there were a ton of cute ones available on Etsy, but they were expensive!  My solution was to make him one myself.  :) I think it turned out pretty cute.  It was tricky to find a checkered flag print that was small enough it wouldn't be lost on a tiny onesie.  The hardest part was figuring out the Wonder Under - I must be challenged because it didn't really adhere and we had to stitch around the 1, but I like that better because it makes it stand out more.

My favorite part of the decorations had to be the cupcake toppers.  They are adorable, I could look at the picture of the cupcake tower all day long!  I made a collage of the party set up because it was my first birthday party attempt and I think it turned out pretty well, so I had to document it.  The same seller on Etsy that made the invitations did the water bottle labels and I found checkered flag cupcake papers, flags, napkins/plates, and table cloths at Hobby Lobby.  There weren't any set plans for decorating the table, but I made stoplights out of milk cartons, painted some wooden cars from Oriental Trading, and found some paper mache letters at Target so I painted two S's.  The kids gift baskets had a checkered flag patterned bandanna, a trophy with some chocolate gold coins, a toy car, race car themed bracelets, and a "#1" body sticker.  At the last minute I decided I wanted to have Abba Zabba's for the adults because their packaging worked with the checkered flag pattern, but man, they are hard to track down!  No luck at the two grocery stores I tried, Target, CVS or Walgreens.  Thank goodness there's a Powell's Sweet Shop near by!  There are a TON of adorable handmade birthday hats for sale on Etsy (discovered when I was looking at the shirts), but I couldn't bring myself to spend that much money on a birthday hat that Seb probably wouldn't even wear.  I found a cardboard one at Party City and could justify the two bucks that cost and I'm glad I did because I think he wore it for about 40 seconds.

I had leftover fabric from the shirt so I cut out little triangles and taped them around Sebastian's high chair tray, my less time consuming version of a bunting banner.  We even packed his race car bib!  I had picked up a large foam #1 finger with hopes of getting it onto Seb's hand, but had no luck with that.  I tried for weeks to get him to point and hold up one finger, but was unsuccessful.  Now, a couple weeks later, he's constantly walking around doing it.  He didn't care for the foam finger though, so I don't have any pictures of that.  Maybe if we had gone with this theme for his second birthday I might have had better luck.

And of course, I don't think we got a single family picture that day.  :(  I'm going to have to remind myself to get one next time and at future parties.  I'm also looking forward to when he gets older and the parties can be held at fun places.  As I type this I'm having flashbacks to all the Saturday's spent working at Camelot back in high school and dealing with the birthday parties.  We've got our family Halloween party in October and then no more parties until next year!