For my son's 3rd birthday, we chose a construction theme. I made the invitations myself and designed them like a brochure and named a
construction company after my son. The front of the invitation said (Name) Construction Company's Annual Party, 2003. I made pockets on the inside of the front cover that held a direction card and made small die cuts to hold business cards I printed. For the license #, I used the date my son was born. I wrote the party information like everyone was being invited to the construction company's 3rd anniversary party, as well as the founder and CEO's 3rd birthday. The cover was a sunflower yellow and the inside was on white paper. I downloaded images of construction trucks from the web and put one per page, not using the same image twice. The table was set with a black plastic table cloth. I used left over yellow paper from the cover of the invitation to make yellow hash marks representing a road down the middle of the table. On top of the plates, I placed the napkin, fork, spoon and a little wooden constrution vehicle (Oriental Trading Company $9.95 for 12) and over all of that I placed a yellow construction hat (Oriental Trading Company $3.95 for 12). I made sticker with the "Company" name as well as the child's name, so this became the place card and all the kids wore them during lunch! For lunch, I decided a bag lunch would be perfect - just like real construction workers. All kids got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bag of goldfish crackers, a small bag of grapes and a apple juice box - all of which I was able to prepare a few hours before the party. Serving lunch took less than 30 seconds!!!!! I made chocolate cupcakes and turned vanilla frosting gray with some black dye. I rolled the edge of the cupcakes in black sanding sugar and placed an orange cone candle on the middle. We aslo served ice cream. For favors, I made logo sweatshirts. I found Hanes sweatshirts at Target (on sale!!!! - make sure to make a list of who is coming and approxiamte their sizes before you buy the sweatshirts - it makes it so much easier to have a list to check off so you don't forget anyone!) and bought photo transfer sheets at Jo-Ann's ($5.99 for 3 sheets). I printed the logo, which named my son's "Company", date established (year he was born) and had an image of a red truck, on the transfer sheets using the iron-on transfer setting on my printer and printing it MIRROR IMAGE. I put a border around the logo so in would be easy to cut. Carefully I cut out each logo and after practicing on an old t-shirt, ironed very carefully onto the sweatshirt. I rolled up the sweatshirts so the logo was facing out and tied it up with some speaker wire my husband had left over. I printed out the kids' names on paper and put an eyelet through the left corner which enabled me to stick it through the wire. It was a tight fit, so I know the name tags wouldn't fall off. My son has a yellow dump truck that I piled all of the sweatshirts in and that was the centerpiece of the table, which was actually an accident (I was trying to find a place to get them out of the way until the party started!!!) We had black, yellow and white balloons on our driveway to let everyone know where the party was. We planned on having balloons all over, but the day of the party was so windy that all of the balloon strings had gotten tangled! We placed caution tape all over and placed a few orange cones around. And since it was sunny but really cold and windy the day of the party, when all the kids went outside to play, they all wore their logo sweatshirt! And I knew with the group of kids we were having at the party, games weren't needed. All the kids played in my son's room putting together his construction truck puzzles and playing with his car wash!
