Monster Truck Birthday Party: Celebrating 4 years!
Party planning is seriously one of my favorite things. Birthday parties are the best of the best. This year John decided that he wanted to have a Monster Truck Birthday Party. We are HUGE fans of monster trucks in this house. We’ve been to seen the Monster Jam show 3 years in a row and both of the kids love it. I hate to admit it but we own a ridiculous amount of monster truck toys and the kids love to line them up and race them together. So let the party planning begin!
John’s birthday falls on Memorial Day weekend and school is usually already out making it a challenge to round up those school friends. So this year we decided to plan the party for earlier in the month and on a weekday! We typically only have 1 day each weekend to spend as a family so we know how valuable that time is to everyone. We planned for a Friday evening after work and served easy kid friendly dinner!
Since Memorial Day is typically pretty rainy in Central Texas we’ve always done indoor parties. Not to mention that last year we stuck to a pretty chill party, that included grandparents only and homemade cake (baby sister was only days home from a 42 day NICU stay). So this year I wanted it to be BIG and AWESOME and what says that better than Monster Trucks!?
Monster Truck Birthday Party: Location! Location! Location!
It’s one of the hardest parts of planning a party. The Mister had the best idea and he says, I think we should have it at our neighborhood park. I mean there is an awesome playground, entertainment – CHECK! No matter who shows up from invites there are going to be kids there and playing, party guests (invited and crashers) – CHECK! Our favorite neighborhood park has the best playground because it is completely shaded by giant trees! There are picnic tables around the playground and we set up the grill a little bit away for safety.
Monster Truck Birthday Party: Invitations & Decorations
I ordered the cutest invites off of Etsy and had them printed up at a local office supply store. This was seriously one of the hardest decisions, because there are so many adorable choices! Punchbowl has some other cute ideas as well if you prefer to go the digitial route. I didn’t have emails for all of the school friends, so paper was the way to go.
Since we were partying at the park I wasn’t too worried about decorations, I order these cute race flags online and covered the tables with white craft paper. Once the tables were covered I rolled a toy monster truck over an ink pad and then rolled over the paper to make a tire tread.
Monster Truck Birthday Party: Entertainment
The kids ran wild and played on the play structures. Lots of parents roamed around keeping eyes on everyone and I spotted a few games of tag. With a park birthday you get to drop all the stress of games if you want to. Oh, and I want to. You will not meet another person who avoids party games like I do. Wanna know what I am a sucker for, a cute photobooth. I found this awesome monster truck photobooth idea on pinterest, but could never find the original source that it linked to.
Here are the supplies I used to make the Monster Truck Photobooth:
Large cardboard box (thank you neighbor who just when to Ikea)
1 sheet of white foam board (craft store)
Metallic Silver Chrome Duct Tape
2 Medium dowel rods (craft store)
Scissors (need to be awesome to cut the foam board)
I got to work using tracing out the main shape of the truck and various parts from the sheet of cardboard and cutting them out. I’d show you pictures but this project was done in the late hours of the night when my children were sleeping. The lighting is terrible. The white foam board will need to be cut in half short wise and will provide the base area so that you won’t see the kids shoes in pictures.
Now you should have all of your various pieces, start to cover in duck tape. I would advise you don’t cover the back size due to it weighing the pieces down. I moved things around and got everything to fit the way I wanted and started to assemble it together. Attaching the dowels last to make the truck stable and easy to carry or stake down into the ground. I chose the colors of suck tape based on my son’s favorite Monster Truck, Grave Digger. You can change those to whatever matches your childs favorite. Although I will tell you that if you child is requesting a general Monster Truck theme, Grave Digger is one of the most popular and is easy to find merchandise for.
I snapped a picture of each child “driving” the monster truck during the party and had them printed up into actual pictures! We wrote thank you notes on the back of each one, signed by John and I laminated them before adding a strip of magnetic tape to the top. Now each child has a fun picture and thank you note in one.
The other thing I love at a children’s birthday party is a pinata, as do most kids. I ordered this amazing Grave Digger Monster Truck Pinata and filled it to the max. I even cut extra holes in the wheels to stuff more candy in it. The kids had a great time whacking away at it. Note to self figure out how the order of hitters should work for pinatas. Oh! and don’t forget something to hit the pinata with! If you are feeling extra craft here is a great tutorial on making your own pinata.
Monster Truck Birthday Party: Cake!
I’ve never made a truly amazing cake before but with all this time I was spending on pinterest planning this party, I was determined that I could make monster truck cake that would be top notch. I decided to use my mom’s homemade chocolate buttercream recipe that I know everyone in my family loves and it goes great with any yellow box mix. I spent days figuring out the amount of layes I would need, the size cake pans and what I needed to make this look awesome. So to answer those questions, here is what you need for a monster truck cake.
2 6″ round cake pans (or you can cut down larger pieces)
Crusher cars (you can use these in goodie bags too!)
Cake and frosting of choice
Graham crackers
Oreo cookies
Make you cake as you normal would, allowing it to cool completely. I slice the rounded tops off of my cakes so that I have a flat surface to work with. Assemble the 10″ cakes on top of each other with a layer of froasting between. When adding the 2 layers of 6″ cakes you will want to off set them to one side completely. Once they are in place, tap 3 dowels into position (a triangle shape) through the 4 layers. Frost the cake.
In two bowls seperate out the oreo cookie and the white centers. You can discard the white centers (who are we kidding?!) Crush the cookies into smaller pieces. Crush graham crackers into small pieces. Using your crushed cookies (dirt) place on cake in desired positioning. Place several of the “crusher cars” on bottom layer and top with Monster Trucks. You might take your crusher cars outside and scratch them up a little for that crusher look.
