The most depressing thing I discovered while going through birthday party pictures is that I have zero good photos of Oliver's 3rd birthday. They don't really show how fun the party was and they are blurry! I am posting them because I don't want to have a gap in parties, but I'm sad that they are so few and bad. (By the way, my posts are about the party set-up and decorations only, I didn't want to show the kids and the people at the party because I don't have the parents permission and I don't really want Oliver in the pictures either. I'm doing this blog to give people ideas for parties because when I was looking into ideas I could not find very many that I could afford or do or liked.) Also I am not an expert, nor do I think my parties are original or super awesome but hopefully they will spark inspiration in people like some of the post's I've found on the Internet.
Favor bags that I found during the summer time on clearance for .10 cents each, I was very lucky and excited! I found them at Target and luckily Oliver was really into the movie Cars so I was pretty sure it was safe to buy the bags on clearance for his birthday. Also, they were .10 cents each so if he hated the idea by the time his birthday happened, I wasn't out much money. I bought a dozen. 
We held the party in my aunts super cool carport/garage. It has hardwood ceilings and walls and brick floor. It's really a cool setting that reminds me of a lodge or something. We had Oliver's 1st through 3rd birthday at her house and two in the carport and it was a hit. The kids could play in the driveway and if it rained it was undercover. This is a photo of a geotrax racecar set Oliver got for Christmas that the kids had fun playing with. 
I'm lucky that Oliver's birthday is in January because there are tons of fun stuff that go on sale after Christmas and I can get a really good price on things. This Towmater box that you can color was only $6 on clearance and was a huge hit. The kids played inside of it and decorated the outside.
We had differnt stations around the driveway area. There was a beanbag toss that I made beanbags for (no photographic evidence!) I had a spot that we did parachute games, a race track, an geotrax racetrack, the TowMater project, plus we decorated V.W. Bug cars with stickers. (Again, no photos, so sad!!)
I made stations throughout the driveway area. I sectioned them off with black and white checkered flags and even made a line of the flags to the entance to the party. I have no photographic evidence of this however! I wanted a Cars sort of theme, but not totally from the movie "Cars" but kinda cars in general, that way I could use really fun checkered flags for decorations, banners, and table skirts. Also the cakes I made were generic cars because I wanted to make them myself and I'm not skilled enough to make them look like the movie, this way I could get away with it. 
Here is a long shot of the car cakes I made. I bought a cake mold that shaped the cake into cars, and then I decorated them. The mini cupcakes were made to make up for the fact that the car cakes only fed about 2 people each! I found "Cars" juice boxes, that was pretty cool. 
A close up shot of the car cakes. 
I used the checkered flag theme for decorating, it was bascially the checkered flag for most everything but red for table cloths and I used "Cars" plates, cups, and napkins. 
This was the cake that Oliver ate and blew his candles out on, since it was the number 3 and that was his age. I made it red to be kinda Lighting McQueen-ish. 
I put little bowls of snacks at the kids grabbing level so they could graze, as kids do. I made sure they were pretty much healthy choices so that parents wouldn't be mad if the kids came up and chose their own treats. 
This shot was at the beginning of set up but it shows the checkered flag table skirt. 
When I set up a party, I like the idea of a theme but I don't really like a literal one. For instance, the party was a "Cars" theme but I didn't like the idea of buying "Cars" tablecloth's, ballons, signs, a professional decorated "Cars" cake. I'm not saying I didn't have actual "Cars" stuff, but I tried not to blanket the whole party with it which would have been possible because there was a lot of "Cars" partyware available and I could have done everything with the character's from the movie. I think when you don't use everything provided by a theme it makes it more interesting and fun. 
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