Nascar Party -4yr-Personalized Driver Licenses

My son is crazy about anything related to cars so for his fourth birthday, we had a Nascar Party. 

I made the invitations out of some very small black & white checkered flags purchased at a party store.  I simply printed the party info onto a small piece of paper, glued it to one side of the flag, rolled it up and hand delivered into each child's mailbox. 

We happen to live near a mall that has a Nascar Store in it.  This is where they have 6-8 interactive simulators that are very realistic.  So realistic, in fact that anyone under 4 1/2 feet tall could not drive the simulator.  But that worked to our financial benfit. 

The store has a package that for $20 each driver could race four times (each race lasting seven minutes).  So, I commissioned 5 dads to drive all the races while the 10 children switched off as passengers.  This allowed each child to get 14 minutes of actual race time and the dads had a riot trying to beat each other. 

The invitations promised that we would "Fill 'em up" and it so happens that this same mall has a restaurant called John's Garage, fitting into the theme nicely.  As soon as the races finished we all walked over for some hamburgers, hot dogs, fries and lemonaid (I limited the food choices to save on time).  I brought my own cake made to look like a figure 8 race track.  I placed two round cakes next to each other.  Iced it with white icing and used crushed oreos as the track.

The lines in the road were made using just the white Good n' Pleanty candies.  I put several toy cars on the track and found some racecar themed candles.  I cut strips from a black & white checkered plastic tablecloth and stuck it to the icing on the sides of the cake.  This saved having to make a checkered design out of frosting and we simply peeled it off when we cut the cake. 

The goodie bags required a bit of planning.  I asked all the mom's for their child's stats (i.e. birthdate, eye color, height, weight) and a picture that I later returned.  I made drivers licenses on the computer with each child's picture and stats.  The top read NASCAR DRIVERS LICENSE.  My son was listed as the Secretary of Speed. 

I laminated each of these and the boys loved them. Included in the goodie bags were toy cars and chocolate cars.  I also made each child a t-shirt which they put on over their clothes when they arrived.  These made for great pictures and an easy visual to keep track of all the kids.  These were my favorite part. 

I found a sticker of a racecar and enlarged it.  I also cut and pasted each boys picture into the window of the car to look as if they were driving.  I then photocopied each image of the child driving the racecar onto a t-shirt iron-on transfer.  I made each boy his own t-shirt and everyone of them wore their shirt all summer long. 

Note: Our t-shirts were red.  If you use any color besides white, make sure you get the transfers made for dark fabric.  This party was nearly a year ago and the kids still carry their licenses in their wallets and wear their shirts.  So much fun.