My son is totally into Cars, so naturally we decided to have a Cars party! Given that this is probably going to be his biggest obsession in childhood, I wanted to make the party really special for him and  took more than two months to put it all together! INVITATIONS The invitations were fabulous! I used Photoshop to make the invites that were DL size. They had a pic of McQueen, Chick and the King and one of my son. It said, Vroom! Vroom! Ladies and Gentlecars grab your tickets to the hottest race meet in Radiator Springs! Start your engines (name). Race on over and help Nate celebrate his 3rd Birthday on (date). Main event starts (time) at Nate's Speedway (address). Pre-registration due (RSVP) to Pit Chief: Mummy (phone number). BYO Pit Crew! I then made a ticket for each person in the family they said admit one adult or admit one child and I put the appropriate number of tickets with the invite. I also made a ticket folder and placed the invitation (which was printed on photo paper and had a magnet on the back) and the tickets inside. On the front it said Your tickets to a premier special event with the Nat's Speedway logo (the Cars logo with Cars edited out and replaced with Nate's Speedway) and the tab inside holding everything in had a pic of a gearstick that spelt out Nate 03 instead of the gears. When he saw them, my son said Thank you for making this for me Mummy! I love it! Thank you so much! Precious! DECORATIONS We decided to try to turn the house into Radiator Springs. I spent weeks painting signs that I'd copied from the movie! At the front of the house we hung a big canvas banner that said Radiator Springs Grand Prix. I also got my DH to help me make a Toddler life-size Lightning McQueen. We bought a piece of ply and got an overhead projector and used a pic of Lightning from the Net to trace onto the ply. My DH then cut it out and I painted it. It looked fantastic! It was sitting in the front yard and we got a photo of each of the guests as they arrived with Lightning and used it for their thank you card. I also made up pennant flags out of black and white check material and hung them along the front of the house too as well as balloons in black, white and yellow. My FIL is a printer and he printed me up two big Route 66 signs to hang on the front posts as well as a Nate's Speedway sign that I'd made in Photoshop (a pic of Nate, Lightning and Mater as well as the Nate's Speedway logo). I also purchased the Cars Scene Setters and had the giant Doc on the wall as you came up the stairs as well as smaller characters that I'd printed out. When they walked into the house, the house was covered with printouts of the Cars characters. One wall had everyone on it, then they were scattered through the rest of the house. Inside we had Doc's Courthouse and Lizzie's Curio. When they went out the back we had the rest of Radiator Springs. I had made a Fillmore sign up and hung the individual pieces of the sign on a tree branch. This was where the drinks were (including Fillmore's organic fuel punch). Next to Fillmore's was Flo's V8 Cafe (canvas sign that I pegged to the umbrella) where all the food was served and the kids table was decked out in all the Cars party stuff tablecloth, plates, cups, straws, serviettes, blowers, personalised placemats, hats etc. Beside that was Ramone's House of Body Art (cardboard sign), Sarge's Surplus (canvas sign), Luigi's Casa Della Tires (ply sign and cardboard tyre cut-outs), then Tow Mater's (scene setter and cardboard sign) and finally Sally's Cozy Cone Motel (canvas sign) which had a heap of caution cones that I'd borrowed from my Dad. In the shopfronts (we had made them by hammering tall metal stakes into the ground and wrapping plastic around them) I'd placed cash registers since they love playing with cash registers! I'd also borrowed a stringline of bright orange flags which we strung around the outside of the yard. There was also a Lightning McQueen scene setter over the sandpit, a jumping castle and my DH spray painted a race track on the grass. I also had the Cars banners that are sold in the stores, balloons and we hung a tyre from a tree that was later switched with the pinata. ACTIVITIES When guests arrived they could go to Lizzie's Curio and get some colouring pages and crayons to occupy them until everyone arrived, but most went straight to Flo's or the jumping castle. When everyone arrived, we all went to the Courthouse where they were issued with a Licence so they could drive in Radiator Springs. They were so cool  totally based on my real DL, complete with pic of the child. I had laminated them and threaded ribbon through so they wore it around their necks. Next we headed to Ramone's for face painting and tattoos. Just the tattoos would have more than sufficed (though they LOVED the face painting). It was a great way to start the party and break the ice. After Ramone's, we went down to the race track and everyone selected a Car to drive. The Cars were possibly the best thing about the party. I had spent 2 weeks making one a night and had used cardboard boxes to make all the characters. Each night my son told me who to make and I shaped the box like the character and painted it to look like the character. They worked out better than I had ever imagined! Nate, of course, chose to be Lightning McQueen.  We took the Cars to Luigi's for a pit stop to get tyres for the cars but Luigi had been cheeky and hid them around the place so we could have fun finding them! To get the first wheel, they had to climb up the fort and get it and come back down the slide and attach it to the car with blu tack. Then we had to do a Pin the Tyre on Ramone game. I had blown up a pic of Ramone and removed a tyre which my FIL had then printed. I also printed up cardboard tyres and the kids took turns attaching them blindfolded. Once they had their turn, they got another tyre to attach to their car. I had two more activities to get tyres (one was in the jumping castle and the other required the kids to throw the Cars ball through the tyre swing) but the kids were too excited to concentrate so I left it at two and let them play in the cars for a while. Our next activity was tractor tipping. I took the kids to the bottom of the yard and I had an airhorn and pretended to be Mater. When I blew the horn, everyone had to fall. We'd walk around and then suddenly I'd blow the horn and they'd drop to the ground. Then I got them to pretend to be Lightning so that they revved their engines to make me fall  I kept reminding them not to wake Frank.  In the meantime, my sister had hidden in the shed. I bought some material to put around her and printed out Frank's face and cut out eye holes and had attached elastic. I also bought a big piece of silver cardboard and rolled it into a cylinder and attached rope to wear around her neck (his harvesting blades). I kept getting the kids to rev louder and louder and suddenly she came running out of the shed and the kids all screamed and ran to the top of the yard. My 1 yr old daughter thought it was hilarious and still talks about how funny my sister was. Next we had cake. After the cake, it was time for the big race! They put on their cars, lined up at the start line and ran around the track a few times. It wasn't really a race. They just all ran until they didn't want to run anymore and were falling to the ground in fits of giggles! At the end of the race, I got them all to line up and presented each of them with their own little trophy and shook their hands and told each of them that they had run a great race today�. They were so tickled pink with their trophies  far more excited than I had anticipated! Everyone got a trophy because I'm not keen on competitive games  I like that everyone wins and feels special and has a lovely day. The last activity was the pinata. I got everyone to grab a string and pull together, when none of those opened the pinata, they got to try again. Given that this was the first pinata most had experienced, you should have seen their faces when they saw all the lollies fall out! I gave them all plastic loot bags which they filled. There was so much left over that I had to get them to go back and really fill their bags. I was surprised how good they were about not being greedy given they're mostly 3! COSTUMES For the party I dressed my son in a light blue Cars dress shirt (which was also the shirt he'd worn in the invite photo) and I made a special dress for my one year old daughter so she'd match. I made a black halter neck dress with check material for the trim and then ironed on a McQueen transfer on the chest of the dress.  She looked so cute in it and everyone wanted to know where the dress had come from! PARTY SNACKS Some of the special food that we had that was Cars related were the wheel biscuits I'd made choc biscuits with a lolly attached as the hub cap and Lightyear piped around the outside as well as the  wafer finger biscuits that I'd covered in choc ganache and attached a red, yellow and green Smartie to so that they looked like traffic lights. We also served yummy cafe food like mini pies, mini sausage rolls, mini pizzas, mini quiches, sandwiches etc as well as the standard fun party food throughout the party. CAKE For Nate's birthday cake, I had made a carved 3D fondant Lightning McQueen cake which was a huge hit. He was positively beaming when I placed it in front of him. We served it with rainbow ice cream since my son loves ice cream and rarely gets it!   After everything was done, the kids then played on the jumping castle, ate some more, played with the toys (I'd set up a corner of the house with a heap of Nate's Cars toys that they could play with) and played with the box Cars for ages. They also played in the shop fronts. FAVOURS As the party wrapped up, they all got their party bags which were awesome. I made little blue material drawstrings backpacks onto which I'd ironed on a Lightning image with their name. Inside was choc full of goodies! The only edible item was a choc racing car. I had made a door hanger, a notebook, a personalised magnet, a puzzle, a memory card set, a colouring book and a paint set (plaster-of-Paris Cars character using a choc mould teamed with a mini watercolour paint set). I had also made a CD up of Nate's cruisin tunes as well as a Cars cover for the crayons to match the theme. The other items that I bought were: Cars Dough, a Cars pencil, a Cars ring, a wheel yo-yo, Cars foamies, a Cars cupcake topper (cheaper than buying an actual car), a Cars sticker sheet and a racing car watch game. The kids LOVED their bags and I'm told they are still playing with everything in them! This party was so much fun. I asked my son if it was the best party ever and he said Ever, ever�. It was well worth the two months of constant work it took to put it all together!