Monster Truck Party

My grandson Carter turned three last week and he wanted another monster truck party.  Since this is what he had at his 2nd birthday my daughter and I had to get cre8tive and find new ideas for this year’s party.  Thank you Pinterest 🙂  Although I also curse Pinterest because there are SO many ideas that you just want to make and do them all.  I’m an over-achiever, as is my daughter, so we got a lot of things done that I think are pretty stikin cute and not a repeat of last year.

Because my daughter Shannon moved to Wisconsin, last year I had to fly to attend Carter’s birthday. I decided to do a couple of monster truck party decorations at home and bring them with me. Again, thanks to Pinterest those couple of things turned into a lot.  So to add to the addiction we all have with Pinterest, I will show you what we came up with.  That way, other people can pin them and then get sucked in to the over-achievers club like me 🙂

First I found these felt bags on clearance at Joann’s for .30 each.  What? That is crazy good.

I thought they would be great for the goodie bags.  So I brought them home and dressed them up a bit

With a little help from my Silhouette machine of course.  After I printed and cut out the tags, I glued some “racing stripe” ribbon on the bag and attached a button to tie them close

I made these Oreo Monster truck spare tire tags to go inside the goodie bags

Once I got my Silhouette machine going I couldn’t stop making stuff. Seriously, I was on a roll.  I made some “fuel” water bottle labels {Printed them out with our laser printer using contact paper}

We made a “refueling” drink table that also included juice boxes, adult beverages and lemonade, but I guess I didn’t get a picture of the whole table, oops!

I love printing out flags on my Silhouette for parities,they are so easy and fast to do.  I print them on contact paper.  

We used them to decorate the fruit cars

I used the print and cut feature for these “tools” utensil wrappers.  The funny thing is I wrapped them all before I left on my trip, and putting them in my suitcase was no easy task.  That was probably something I should of done once I got there..duh!  But they all made it one piece, no broken utensils, thank you SouthWest Airlines

Using the print and cut feature again {seriously I just learned how to do this last year and it is the bomb!} I made these “pit” passes.  I got the plastic sleeves from Office Depot

We added ribbon and their names to the tags.  The kids loved them.   You can see the monster truck piñata in this picture.  It isn’t the angle of my camera, that thing was tiny.  My daughter and I were laughing when she got it in the mail.  Oh well, the kids still enjoyed hitting it, even though they only got a couple of pieces of candy each since it didn’t hold that much.

Shannon ordered the cake locally.  It was super cute.

You can see  in the corner of the table in the above picture of my lame attempt to make sugar cookie stoplight cookies.  It was a fail.  I am not a baker, even with ready made dough. 

So after my failed attempt, I came up with the idea to make Rice Krispy stoplights instead. I went to the store and bought a couple of boxes of ready made Rice Krispy Treats. Stuck the red, yellow and green M & M’s on them, inserted a stick and ta da!

Now, that is my kind of baking lol  I wrapped a foam rectangle with black and white plaid duck tape and inserted them into the foam.

We had some fun activities for the kids to do too.  We set up a “monster truck” racing course with some of Carter’s ride on toys and some of the kids brought their own.  I made a speed limit sign {of course it was a 3 because Carter was turning 3}

We had a race track board that I made in my hotel room after a visit to Lowes.  {yeah I will DIY anywhere} I used 4 strips of flat molding glued and screwed on to a wood board

I let the glue dry over night, and then cut black shelf liner for the road and used a paint pen for the lines. Super simple, my kind of DIY

I finally used my silhouette machine for cutting fabric and made monster truck t-shirts for both my grandsons to wear at the party.  It was super easy and I can’t wait to try it again.

But I think the most adorable idea at the monster truck party was what Shannon did. She printed out black and white pictures of Carter from age 1, when he first started playing with trucks, up to age 3, and we hung them on a ribbon across the Easy Up.  It was hard to get a full shot of them so I took close ups

Such a cute idea right?  There is no denying Carter loves his trucks!  I also ordered these monster truck decorations from Amazon and had them sent directly to Shannon’s house. {side note, I recently signed up for Amazon Prime and I’ve gotta tell ya, your stuff gets there SO fast!}

Tire bowl  Orange cones Racing flags Start your engines Monster truck pinata Monster truck temp tatoos  Checkered flag pendant Monster Truck tire cups Checkered paper plates

I am just hoping that next year for his birthday he loves something new.  I don’t think I could do a monster truck party 3 years in a row 🙂