Car Party

When I started planning out Eli's 2nd birthday party in my mind months ago, I very quickly settled on a 'car party.' His love for cars is no secret, so we knew he would love it regardless. I know that in the years to come he will have much more of an opinion when it comes to his birthday parties, but I sure have enjoyed planning his first 2! I'm not too big on themed parties, and can never find what I'm looking for as far as decorations, so I typically end up making most of the decorations to fit the vision in my head. I did the same thing last year for his monkey party. I use sites like etsy to find a basic idea or theme, and then I make it our own.

Here are a few of the birthday boy right before his party...

He's still loving his big Cars balloons. We like to get our moneys worth out of things :)


I had these little car and truck stickers designed, and then I had them printed at Staples. I cut them to fit the suckers for favors, and then again as cupcake toppers.
I love that the little trucks had an 'E' on them.
I've done cupcakes for both of his parties. They are a favorite in our house! I used our favorite, 'rainbow chip' icing, and added some red sprinkles for color.

I forgot to take a picture of the food table again once it was all done. We did hot dogs on the grill, pimento cheese sandwiches, and had a lot of fun extras to go along with. As usual, we had way too much food!
Eli was so proud when he blew out his '2' candle all by himself. Unfortunately we missed that on camera! There was however, plenty of cupcake eating caught!
We thought it was so sweet that GG ate at the kids table!
We moved Eli's new play set outside for the party. That poor thing got a rude awakening! I think there were 10 kids playing on it at one time. We were all just waiting for the whole thing to tumble down the hill into the lake.
Eli had some really good present opening helpers! It's a good thing too, because he would open a gift and then disappear with it for a while. He eventually got the hang of it!
He got a leapfrog laptop from my Aunt & Uncle. He seriously loves this thing! We knew he would, and hoped it would get him away from our laptops! He's always wanting to 'type' and help me work, so this has been great. He's already learned several more letters and animals since we got this too.
Another crowd favorite was the big Tonka dump truck from Mr. Billy & Ms. Amanda. He opened this first, and could have stopped there for the day. Daddy couldn't get it out of the packaging fast enough!
The boys were sure to test out all of the new cars and trucks together.
We're still laughing about this. Uncle Charles is always up to something crazy. He always seems so innocent, but really he's always scheming or plotting something :) He transformed my chalkboard sign and made it into a plea for tips! He thought that 'please leave a dollar' and a tip jar was much better than my boring old 'please take a favor.' Of course I didn't notice it until the party was almost over. I'd say he 'won' that round!

Overall it was another really fun party! The weather couldn't have been any more perfect for an afternoon cookout. Most importantly, we were so blessed to have such a big part of the Morgan family here. I know Eli loved having so many of his cousins there to celebrate with!