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Once upon a time my oldest turned 3.  He was ob-sessed with Cars at the time so naturally it was a cars party.  This was back in 2012, before the age of pinterest! (or at least before I was cool enough to know about it).  But thank goodness I still had the rusty, trusty internet to peruse for some ideas.  I found something somewhere where a woman had made cars out of boxes for the guests- GENIUS! I adapted her idea a bit (to make it more do-able for the artistically challenged) and only made three cars (not one for each guest) because he-llo, they took forever!  Sweet Hubby convinced me to spray paint the race track on the grass in lieu of the monstrosity of a task I was originally thinking.  This spraypaint is specifically designed to be used on grass.  And of course every race track needs a few advertisements (notice the very small dinoco and rusteze signs?).  The tires in the middle I picked up from Big-O- they kinda looked at me like I was crazy when I asked to “borrow” a few garbage tires for a weekend.  Oh and before I get too far into the actual party I should mention the invitations!  This was before my savvy photoshop days (not that im very savvy now) so I ordered invitations through shutterfly (with diaper points!) that looked like admission tickets.  They were their tickets to get into the Piston Cup Raceway.  Anyway, back to the party…

When guests arrived we gave them their “pit passes” which had their names and also assigned them to one of three teams: team mcqueen, team dinoco or team chick hicks.  Each team had three people: a driver, a refueling pit stop and a tire changing pit stop person (and of course they can rotate and take turns doing each thing!).

I only had one empty gas can, so I used an old laundry detergent container as well. “allinol” for the all container- hah!  My dear hubby cut holes in the cars for the gas.

The tires are just black paper plates with velcro on the back.  The cars had velcro too for easy changing. Can I say a word about the wonders of velcro?  I order it in bulk from Amazon of course and use it for so many things!

 that sign took me for.ever.  I’m not that artistically talented hopeless at that kinda thing so I was happy it turned out somewhat recognizable.

 And no 3 year old party is complete without a coloring station.  For the most part the nuance of the team and rotation stations was lost on the 3 year olds.  They just ran around.  Which is just perfect 🙂  The idea probably would have been perfect for a 4 or 5 year olds party.  But the coloring station is pretty much a party must in my book to keep those idle hands busy.

 I made some tow mater cupcakes, tutorial found here.  I substituted mini oreos for the wheels

 I saw the idea to do black & white wall tires with powdered and chocolate donuts- so cute.  I reused a bunch of spinach containers (you know those plastic containers the spinach comes in at the grocery store?) and painted white and black racing checkers for all the food containers.

favors were re-purposed baby food containers that I painted with the racing checkers and made roads on the lids.  I filled them with race car shaped marshmallows I had run into a few months earlier.  It sure makes a party so much easier if you know the theme well in advanced and can keep an eye out for random stuff like that!  (get the ka-ciao reference??)

And lastly, a free download for ya- pit passes & food labels.  In my opinion food labels are essential to tie a party together 🙂