aiden’s 2nd birthday party: TWO Fast

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I can’t believe I’m even writing this: my little boy is two years old 🥺

He has the biggest (and I don’t say that lightly) obsession with Disney Pixar Cars, so of course that had to be the theme of this birthday party. I think we’ve probably watched that movie series twenty-seven times in the past six months. It’s crazy. And thank goodness all three are great movies 😂

Putting together this party was a lot of work, I’m not going to lie. But I absolutely loved every minute of it. Okay, maybe not every minute – there were quite a few things that went wrong, especially in the last 48 hours – but for the most part, it was my favorite. I tried to DIY everything (I should give you a reason here but I honestly don’t have one) but there are a few things I outsourced.

Let’s get into the details.

Starting from the beginning: the invitations. I knew I wanted to create a pit pass for these. I mean how cute. I originally was going to design my own, print them, and put them inside a plastic sleeve. But then, I came across these plastic ones on Etsy 😍 They were a little pricy, but they were so worth it. I also originally wanted to send a pit pass to each person, so if it was a family of 4, they would get 4 passes, but with these, I just did 1 per address. I had to give myself a limit.

Okay, now on to the good stuff: decorations. I somehow managed to save the foam board letters that we used at Aiden’s 1st birthday party. So I turned them around and used the other side to make them Cars-themed. If you look closely, you can tell that they were not designed to be used this way as the N is backward 🫣 but I think they still worked just fine. I used peel-and-stick wallpaper and Disney Pixar Car’s posters to decorate them. Unfortunately, these were a pain to make, and again, if you look closely (I did not take any photos up close for a reason) the cuts are very uneven and the tape is peeling off the ends. All this is to say, it’s okay if it’s not perfect. Nobody cared but me. I placed these in front of a black and white backdrop for a cute photo opp. It was also a nice backdrop to the party as everything was placed in front of it.

The food table was one of my favorites! I made the cake with this chocolate cake recipe and then did a buttercream frosting with red icing. Boy did I learn a lesson about red icing during this 😂 I used an entire bottle of red food coloring at first and it turned the icing hot pink! I thought I was going to die. It was the night before and my icing was fit for a Barbie cake. Luckily, Michaels was open and I was able to get red gel food coloring – game changer. It turned red in a matter of seconds. After the cake was made, I wished I had planned to decorate it a little more, but at that point, it was too late and I was too tired 🙃. I did not make the cake topper; this was one of my “leave it to the experts” moments, and I’m so glad I did! It turned out so perfect. Now I just need to figure out what I can do with it in his room so that it doesn’t live in a box for the next 16 years.

We did Costo pizza for the main food along with caeser salad (Aiden’s favorite) and fruit salad. We also had fresh popcorn in these little fuel can cups and donuts (that were another day of disaster if you can’t tell just by looking at them 🫣). I went into the donut shop and ordered two dozen chocolate donuts. They were supposed to look like tires from Luigi’s Tire Shop. Adorable right?! Well it was 6:30am so I was clearly not paying much attention and just wanted to get in and get out of there. He opens the box to show me the donuts and I see chocolate frosting on top; cool, done, perfect, let’s go. Out the store and on home I went, just to discover they were GLAZED donuts with chocolate frosting! What in the actual micromanage did you not understand about chocolate donuts?! Again, ran to Michael’s to get something to fix these because I couldn’t stand the idea of going back and spending $50 more on donuts. They were all out of the chocolate spray paint, but I did find some frosting, so I dipped a few of them to try to get my idea across and then called it a day. Again, nobody cared but me.

The party favors were also outsourced to an expert and rightfully so. I mean, do you see them?! They are so freaking cute. If you are in Sonoma County, 707 Stitches does amazing customized embroidery. They also made Aiden’s the little Car’s sweatshirt for his Easter basket with a Lightening McQueen on it.

The other random decorations were all found on Amazon (linked below). This balloon kit was amazing, especially for the price. I didn’t get to use them all but could definitely have made a big statement arch if you’re talented like that. That little one was all I had in me 😝. Oh and our outfits were also super last-minute Amazon finds too!

All in all it was an amazing day. This party was obviously just as much for me as it was for Aiden but the look on his face when he saw all the Car’s stuff was priceless. Every time he walked by something he would call out the car’s name 🥰 He loved it so much.

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