Just now finally starting to catch up on blog posts.  yikes!  It has been a whirlwind few months, but thankfully things are finally starting to wrap up.  I’m ready to get focused back on what I love!

My little man turned two last October, and to say that my son loves cars might actually be an understatement.  This kid is REALLY into his cars.  He has been for well over a year now, which made picking the theme for his second birthday pretty easy (and could potentially be the theme of his third birthday as well).

The inspiration for the invitations and party decor came from the birthday outfit that he wore.  He loved these invites so much that he carried TWO of them around with him for at least a week after they came in the mail.

His Daddy and Paw Paw built this awesome track to race matchbox cars.  We loved the idea that we found here, but decided to go with a simpler (and less expensive) option.  It was a HUGE hit.  My son loved it, of course, but we were happy to see that our older nephews had a good time racing on it as well!

a few shots of it in action…

For decorations, I made a balloon wreath for the front door using this tutorial from How Does She.  It really wasn’t hard to make at all, and I love how it turned out!  I had to add some car accents to go with the theme of the party of course.

Over the fire place we made a “B” sign and used some of his favorite toy cars to decorate around it.  I also bought some flashing stop lights when they were on sale at Toys “R” Us, which I think went perfectly!  One of my incredibly sweet friends helped me put together some banners that we hung around the house and outside to make it a little more festive.  I seriously could not have gotten them done if she hadn’t helped me (need to work on my time management skills for sure), so I was very grateful.  I don’t think it would have been the same without them!

Dessert table consisted of his cake (I am not a decorator, so please don’t judge it too harshly), PB&J stop light cookies, chocolate “tires”, car shaped marshmallows, and some awesome car shaped cookies that I bought from acookiejar off of Etsy.  I love love LOVE how they turned out, and they were delicious too.  I would highly recommend!

I will say… I loved the idea of these stop light cookies.  Still do.  HOWEVER, if I had it to do over again, I would use red, green, and yellow m&m’s instead of the jelly.  I think they would not only be easier to assemble, but execution would look quite a bit cleaner too.

For favors, I decided to go with travel toys.  We had just recently taken our first plane ride, and learned the importance of a good distraction while traveling.  One of his favorite items from the trip was an I Spy bag.  Once again, through the magic of Etsy, I found a smaller favor sized version at The Crafting Corner.  Below is a photo from their website of the product that I purchased.  They were a pretty big hit with the moms.  A great diaper bag toy!

I added in a few stickers, and some more age appropriate toys for the older/younger kids as well.  This is how they looked all wrapped up and ready to go!

Overall, the party turned out great!  I wasn’t quite able to finish everything that I had hoped to do, but my son STILL talks about the “party” or “birthday” whenever he sees one of these cars.  (It’s been quite a topic of conversation while putting the blog post together, for sure!)  You can’t ask for more than that!

All of the printed items shown above are available for purchase.  The invitation can be found on my etsy shop, and a custom listing can be created to add any of the other items! The only thing that I haven’t shown here is the matching thank you note design.  Please feel free to contact me if you’re interested!

Also… Special thanks to Goodness and Fun for the clip art that my son loves so much!