Thanks to a lot of different online ideas, I came up with a fantastic party for my 5 year old boy. He wanted a Disney Cars themed party so I decided to go all out for it!  INVITATIONS: I couldn't handle spending so much money on custom car themed invitations so I made them myself on publisher. I had a picture of my son and had Race Over To Noah's 5th Birthday!" at the top in italic font so that it looked like the letters were going fast. I put the Race Date (party date) Start Time (party time) Race Track (_____ Raceway) R.S.V.P. to Pit Crew Chief and Fill Up Your Tanks With Dinner and Dessert. I also only wanted the kids to come to the party so I put "Adult supervision provided just the kids please!". I had a local store print the postcards and it only cost me $5.00 plus stamps. CAKE: I love making dramatic 3D cakes. I used the Wilton 3D Cruiser cake pan and a 13x9 inch cake pan. I made the 13x9 inch cake and cut it to the size that I wanted. I placed it on the cake board and tried to do a crumb coat on it. I wasn't happy with the sides of my cake and used cardboard wrapped in foil to create the straight 90 degree angles. I used frosting to "glue" them to the sides of the cake and taped the corners together so that the tape only touched the cardboard. I frosted the 13x9 in cake in a black and white checkerboard pattern. I used chocolate frosting tinted black to make the black portions of the cake which worked so well! I didn't worry too much about the middle top part of the cake as I knew that the car would be placed on top. I baked the cake in the cruiser cake pan and placed it on top. I sculpted the hood of the car to look like Lightning McQueen. I made a spoiler out of cardboard and attached it to the back of the car with toothpicks. I frosted the cake to look like Lightning McQueen with multiple colors of frosting and different frosting tips.  PARTY PIT STOPS:   I made clip art signs and printed them before the party. There was a sign on the front door that said detour with a picture of Sheriff on it to point kids to the backyard instead of the front door. The gate to the backyard had a "Welcome To Radiator Springs" sign on it along with two large checkered flags hanging over the door (see below for the flag information). Kids entered the party and were greeted at Sheriff's DMV. They received personalized driver's licences with their picture address and birthday on it. The licenses were laminated and hung around their necks. Then they stepped into their own car made out of a cardboard box.  grabbed boxes from recycle bins around town and made sure that I had one for every child. I cut off the flaps and made sure to keep the boxes small enough and light enough for the kids to wear around. Taller kids got the taller boxes while smaller ones got the smaller boxes. The cars were spray painted and had doors painted on each side. They had yellow headlights made out of construction paper on the front and red spray painted tail lights on the back. I also made license plates out of construction paper that was glued to the back with the letters of the child's name as the letters of the license plate. The kids wore their cars with twine that was criss crossed over the top so that it would criss cross behind the child's neck. I also had multi colored flames on the back of the cars and paper plates spray painted black that were the wheels on each side. The kids loved their cars and were excited to take them home. The kids didn't wear their cars the entire time of the party but got to go park their cars in the parking lot at the DMV throughout the party. Then the kids went to Ramone's House Of Body Art where they received cars movie themed tatoos and face painting. I had car themed examples ready for the kids to choose from but some of them wanted the generic hearts flowers and rainbows.  The kids then visited Fillmore's Organic Fuel where they received the choice between "oil" (purple koo-aid) or "gas" (green kool-aid). I think that this was probably the hit of the party. The kids loved asking for more gas to drink but I made sure to let them know that it was just pretend!   The next stop was at Luigi's Casa De La Tires where the kids got into two teams. I got blow up inflatable tubes at the dollar store and there was one for each team. The kids took turns rolling the tire down to a hula hoop in the yard and rolling it back. Another stop was at Doc's Red Light Green Light. I put red and green circles made out of construction paper onto paper plates. The plates were glued to popsicle sticks so that there were easy to show the kids during the game.  The kids ate dinner at Flo's V8 Cafe. The table was decorated in black and red colors with balloons streamers plates utensils and napkins. I didn't spend a lot of time on the food because I knew that the kids wouldn't care so much about all of it. When I brought out the cake the kids were so excited. They loved the car that they were eating and asked for certain parts of him...tire window headlights etc. We did ice cream cups to make it easy on ourselves.  The next stop was at The Piston Cup Race which was a small raceway in the yard that was outlined in checkered flags. I got checkered flag material (2 yards) and cut triangles out of it. I hot glued the triangles to kabob skewers. I got 39 flags out of the material and 2 larger flags that I put at the entrance spot of the yard. I also wrapped red streamers around the flags to make the raceway clearer. The kids got to race in pairs around the yard and loved it. I made sure that they "walked fast" around the raceway because I was nervous about the skewers hurting the kids if they fell onto them. It was fine. The kids found small trophies in their goodie bags that I wrote on "Piston Cup" and the child's name.  The kids watched the birthday boy open presents and then stopped at the very last pit stop Red's Water Balloon Toss. The kids got to toss water balloons at each other and I wanted to do this at the end of the party so that the kids weren't wet all night.  I also had a last game that I had ready in case I needed to stall for time. I printed out smaller cars characters from the movie and placed them around the yard. The kids had to go find the character that I called out. They had fun finding them and the person who found the character first got to put the picture on their own cardboard car. The party took a lot of prep time with the cardboard boxes but I spread it out over 2 weeks and it wasn't that bad. The cake took two hours to decorate but I've decorated a lot of cakes in the past. We had 11 total children and had enough to do in the two hours that we had for the party. I could have left out one of the pit stops and it would have been perfect for timing. I printed out thank you postcards that say "Dear _____: Thank You For the and left blank lines for my son to write in the gift. Then it said You're The Best! Love Noah. He'll get to send thank you's to his friends and also practice his writing skills! "