Racers, Start Your Birthday Engines!

Today I’m excited to share a few photos from Incredi-Boy’s eighth birthday! These days, this kid is so hot for Hot Wheels that a race car theme was the natural choice for his party.

After years of raising girls and being immersed in little girl world for so long, I think people who knew me wondered how I would embrace my new role as a boy-mom. Well, while I have absolutely loved doing the girl-mom thing (sooo many sweet memories), I have to say that, overall, I just really love being a mom, period. So, I am very much enjoying and embracing boy-mom life as well!

Incredi-Boy and I had a lot of fun planning this party! Oh, and with Joel having been a HUGE Hot Wheels fan growing up, and a HUGE Nascar fan in his early adult years, I think he got just as excited about this party as the birthday boy did! I was happy for both of them.

With my parties, I’ve learned to plan only one thing that will be the big time-consumer, and then plan quicker options for everything else. There was a cake that Incredi-Boy really wanted so I made that the top priority, and the decorations and meal were the less time-consuming parts.

A couple of weeks prior to the party, I scanned the internet for ideas and found plenty of inspiration! I purchased the supplies ahead of time, collected them in a big bag, and then let them sit until the day of the party. It went together so quickly! There was no crafting required ahead of time. Country Girl and I just ripped opened packages of plates, tablecloths, flags, and cones, and set everything out.

We served pizza, veggies, chips and dip, and several dessert treats.

I baked cupcakes the night before and Country Girl piped them for me the next day. Now we love our star tip, but we decided a plain round tip would be better for a guy’s party theme than the pretty star tip.

Our family favorite sugar cookies showed up for the party in the shape of race cars, but unadorned. Another thing I’ve learned with party-throwing is, when time starts to run short, to let myself drop any items off my to-do list that aren’t entirely necessary. I had planned to glaze these cookies with our Hot Wheels colors, but when the time crunch started that afternoon, I knew this could be dropped. These cookies are pretty tasty without any glaze or icing (in fact, the original recipe doesn’t even call for icing or glaze!), and I’d rather my child have a sane mom at the party than glazed cookies!

So, the cake. I’ve only used fondant icing a handful of times, so my skills with fondant aren’t exactly refined yet. But, I enjoy working with it, and have learned how to hide imperfections, ripples, and wrinkles….kind of like when I’m getting dressed in the morning! I shopped Incredi-Boy’s Hot Wheels tracks and accessories and found several pieces to use as decoration (and washed them first, of course).

I think the real glory for this cake came when we lit the candles that night at the party! With the fondant flames on the sides, and candle flames on top, it was just too cool! It was like at that moment we heard engines revving.

You might be wondering why we would serve a cake and cupcakes. Well, I knew the cake my guy wanted might not be enough to serve everyone, but I didn’t want to tackle a larger-sized HW cake. So, I had cupcakes for the kids, since that’s easy for them to pick up and eat (and they usually prefer that over a slice of cake), and let the adults have the big cake. The kids were thrilled that they got the cupcakes, but the secret they didn’t know was that the big cake was actually a delicious recipe for white chocolate cake. Heehee. I think the adults were ok with not getting cupcakes.

The cutest thing was before the guests arrived when my little guy was so excited. He got out his leap pad and started walking around the kitchen, filming the decorations and food, adding commentary about it being the coolest party ever. It was all worth it for that moment.

*****

Party supplies: All paper goods came from either Walmart or Party City. The cones, flags, “street fabric” (at the front door), and cupcake picks came from Amazon. (I’m sorry I don’t have the links at this moment, but if you want them, just send me a message and I’ll get them to you.) I’ve wanted those orange cones for a while now for games, relay races, and such. I can see using them a lot over the years. The flags aren’t something that I will use again much, other than for him to play with, but they were really cheap so I didn’t mind purchasing them. I’ll use the “street fabric” for games, school, and teaching children’s Bible class. If you are local and ever have a race car-themed event, you are more than welcome to borrow any of this!