Vito's 2nd Birthday Party! Part 2: The party preps

Now that Vito's celebrated his mini-party, time for Mama and Papa to prepare for the big party. And by big party, I mean his party for his 6 mini-friends. Yes, we think 6 guests is a LOT. We can't imagine those kiddie parties that have hundreds of guests!

So last year, I handmade the invitations. Now that I have an infant and a toddler, I can't be a domestic goddess anymore. Plus, it's kinda hard to draw Lightning McQueen! Here are the invitations we got from Toy Kingdom:

Vito loves Lightning's grin. I love the reds. It's a happy invitation!

My added touch is coloring in the word "FRIENDS".  

There's a lot of party giveaways at the store but these were the only age-appropriate ones for Vito's guests.

I put the giveaways in brown paper bags and personalized each!

I must confess that while I love how easy party planning and decorating is with the stuff we found at Toy Kingdom, I did long for making the party more personal, the way I did with his first birthday party. So the night before the Cars-themed party, I decided—on a whim!—to make a center piece for the table. Don't think it's a big deal! It's actually kinda crappy haha. I just suddenly decided on it and made do with whatever materials I found in the house.

But first! Here's what inspired me to take on this little crafts project:


I was singing it, thought of Vito's birthday, that it's such an apt song for the passages of life and before I knew it, I was rummaging in the crafts box! This took just 20 minutes. Really easy, really for the lazy mommy! I used the BlackBerry to take photos because I was too lazy to take the five steps to my writing desk and get the camera!

I reused the extra gray felt paper that I used for the Totoro invitations from last year's party.

I cut little strips of masking tape to make the broken lines in the center of roads.

Measuring tape is a crafty mommy's best friend! 

One side done!

Here's what it looked like!

Voila! Well, I glued the highway to a piece of heavy white paper to ground it. Then I taped the highway to the center of the table. It looked really cute!

But! But! But! It was a major FAIL! Seriously. What was I thinking?! You put toy cars on a table and what will a roomful of little boys do? Climb the table and get the cars!!!

Next post: The gifts from Papa and Mama! Oops, Vince says I shouldn't post about the many gifts we gave our boy so let's go straight to the party!