Hot Wheels -3yr- Rice Krispie Treat Stoplights

Hotwheels Party - 3yr old My son loves Hotwheels cars so I knew he would enjoy a Hotwheels party! 

For the front of the invitations, I scanned the picture of the car on a hotwheels package and put "Cy's 3rd Birthday" in the fire flame where the hotwheels logo usually is.  Inside the invitations, I put a picture of the birthday boy and party info, along with another scanned car picture and the real HW logo scanned from his car storage box. 

The decorations included tons of matching red, blue, and yellow balloons, a racing penant flag banner (ordered from OTC) around the perimeter of the picnic area, small plastic racing flags stuck in the ground, and hotwheels table covers on each table, (I usually don't buy bday theme table covers because I always thought they were a waste of money, but since we had so many picnic tables, the HW table covers really did add to the decorations and festivity).  I rented a race car jump house (I was very excited to find this) that had a giant red race car as the roof (a big hit with the kids). 

At the park we reserved, we had a small cement platform area that I used to create our very own "Hot Wheels City" with my son's HW tracks, and a couple of large plastic road mats taped to the ground (found the mats at a dollar store).  A bunch of HW cars were left out for play. 

Food consisted of the normal BBQ dishes, along with rice krispie treats shaped like stoplights (I cut into rectangles and used frosting to stick red, yellow, and green m&m's).  I planned for 3 games, all with a race car theme: 

1."Car Race"- I saved copy paper boxes from work, cut out part of the bottom, folded that part for the windshield, cut out handles on the sides, spraypainted the outside of the box, glued leftover paper plates painted black as tires, then painted numberson the front and back.  The kids raced across the field and had so much fun pretending they were racing real cars, making "VROOM" sounds, as the adults thought it was hilarious watching the kids run across a big grassy field in their "romper room cars".  I made everyone a winner with caramel apple lollipops given out as prizes.  The cars were very cute and not hard to prepare.

2."Tire Toss" (ran out of time for this one)- I bought an inflatable tire from the dollar store and planned on using tennis balls for the kids to toss through the tire. 

3."Pin-the-car-on-the-finish-line" (ran out of time for this one too)- My niece painted a race track on a big piece of cardboard and I planned on having the kids use stickers as a racing version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.  After the one game we were able to do, it was cake time.  I ordered a Hotwheels theme icecream cake from Baskin Robbins that had a HW car jumping through a ring of fire (the kids were excited about this too). 

After having the chocolate and cookies&cream ice cream cake, the kids had fun taking their turn hitting the red race car pinata (I found online). 

Party favor bags included a hotwheels car, hotwheels fruit snacks, a 1" sheet of race car stickers, a racing flag, a "sticky hand", a water gun, a temporary tattoo, and a ring pop. 

The party was a huge success! It did turn out to be a bit expensive (especially since I had about 30 kids there, along with about 30 adults), however, I had begun planning the party so far in advance, that I was able to look out for deals and buy things over a four month period, (2for1 on HW cars at Kbtoys, bulk favors from OTC, coupons for HW fruit snacks, found lots of things to use from the dollar store, etc.).  The only expenses I had to worry about the week of the party was the food and the jump house rental. 

After seeing the expression on my son's face throughout the party, made it all worth it!  The kids had so much fun!  There was one thing I looked forward to most but wasn't able to do because my printer wouldn't work the night before the party. Prior to the party I contacted parents to get the kids' ages, bdays, weight, height, eye color, and hair color. 

Using my computer, I used an Avery label template to make "Hot Wheels Driver Licenses" for all the kids.  The licenses looked almost exactly like California driver licenses, with a red bar above the picture that read "AGE 21 IN THE YEAR 20--".  I borrowed an i-zone camera from a friend, and took pictures of all the kids during the party.  Since I saved the licenses on a disk, I'm still planning on making their driver licenses I'll just have to include it with their thank you cards!