Alex's Disney Cars themed party

Last Friday I had Alex's NCT friends over for a party at home, as we couldn't afford a party elsewhere/have a small home unfortunately we couldn't have preschool friends over too.

As the last few months in particular Alex has been mad on Disney Cars it was quite obvious the party would be loosely themed on this!

As usual I had a good look for ideas on Pinterest, obviously there were a few ideas that were a bit wasted on a child's birthday party in my opinion, but I selected the simple ones!

Alex's 4th birthday board

The cake

I knew I had to make some sort of lightening McQueen cake for Alex at his request! I didn't have a plan as such, I must admit I usually don't and wing it a bit when it comes to cakes. I knew I wanted to make it white and black like the chequered race flags, so did this on the bottom layers, next I will buy ready coloured icing though as it was a nightmare getting white icing black and getting it the right consistency! I was going to make the top layer light blue like some of the examples above, but the butter icing went odd when I added the food colouring for some reason, so out came the ready to roll icing again.

We have a Duplo Lightening McQueen so used this for the top of the cake as it was just the right size, I used two skewers and created paper chequered flags (these were very rushed and last minute so not as neat as I would have liked!) and then wrote 'Ka-chow Alex is 4'. The cake was a big hit with Alex and it actually tasted so much better than it looked! We had this cake on the Wednesday Alex actually turned 4 but still had half the cake left.

The decorations

I got red, white and black balloons, bunched into 3 and dotted around the lounge. 

I also made some chequered flag bunting to hang from the window. I used white card and cut out black squares to stick on, punched holes and threaded on some ribbon-much cheaper than buying some and only took half an hour.

The Party

Pin the tow hook on Mater

I drew out a large mater first in pencil then went over with a sharpie. Cut out some hook shapes and wrote names on them in preparation for the party, along with a dab of blue tack on the back.

Musical bumps, statues, and pass the parcel

For all of these games I had got some music from the cars films to play and also other various Disney films to play throughout the party too. 

Traffic light play dough

For some of the party games I gave out some prizes of some hand made play dough, I coloured it in red, yellow (as I didn't orange) and green, rolled into balls, put on a skewer, placed on black card and put into a clear cellophane bag to present.

Excuse Alex's fingers!

The food

Rocky Road

I took this name quite literally, melt some chocolate and butter, add crushed biscuits, marshmallows and raisins, cover with more melted chocolate. I then added marshmallows which were cut into strips to make road lines, cool and chop up. 

Traffic light cupcakes

Simply bought cupcakes with icing and red, orange and green Smarties on top.

Spare tyres

Chocolate mini doughnuts.

I could've done more themed food but thought it was a little wasted on doing that for 4 year olds, some ideas were fruit cups for Fillimore's organic fuel, oil dipsticks (bread sticks and veggie sticks), Sally's cosy cones (orange coated ice cream cones filled with goodies), there are plenty of other ideas on Pinterest!

Anyway everyone seemed to have a good time, the party picnic went down well and not as messy as I'd expected!