Truck Themed Birthday Party

For my nephew Grant's birthday my sister-in-law Lindsey decided on an truck theme.  When she asked me to help I was more than happy to oblige!  Thank goodness she asked me otherwise I would have been begging by her feet to help her craft up the party.  The birthday was held on a pavilion on a local lake.  The major projects for the birthday were the centerpieces and cupcake toppers peppered in with loads of creativity to get the truck theme going.  To kick things off I downloaded some truck clip art by BABYSTARDESIGN.  After a while of searching for free clip art I figured the $5.00 for the graphics were well worth it. 

To create the centerpiece I printed off one regular truck and a mirror image of the truck so it would be visible from both sides.  I used the caution signs to personalize the centerpiece with the text "Happy 1st Birthday Grant".  The three items were secured together with tape and a skewer was placed in the middle.  My sister-in-law bought these blue buckets from the dollar section of target and we used some left over floral foam wrapped in blue tissue paper to secure the skewers.  We made one for each table.  Since two trucks fit per page we only used 5-6 sheets of cardstock including the caution signs.  

We chose construction yellow for the table cloths and flanked each side of the centerpiece with caution cones.  This was surprisingly helpful for keeping the table cloths on the table and not blowing about on the highway.  Balloons were a cheap and colorful option to help tie all the colors of the birthday together. 

Some creative things we pulled out of our hats was to use a ladder that they already had and decorate it with "construction" stuff.  My sister-in-law is a kindergarten teacher so she already had all of the toys for the ladder. 

We made signs for the pop with skewers and laminated the sheets so they wouldn't get wet. This made finding the right kind of pop super easy.  We also put the cold salads in big sand buckets and used the shovels as serving spoons (sorry no pic of that).  What I can give you a visual of is me outside the dollar store in 100 degree weather switching the colors of the shovels so each bucket would coordinate.  We did have one or two casualties with the "serving shovels" so I would plan to have extra spoons for back up.

The silverware was wrapped neatly in coordinating napkins and tied with a colorful ribbon.

Oh ya, and guests had to get their silverware out of the back of this dump truck!

Lindsey had bought some truck themed fabric used to accent the dessert table.  A vintage stool was used to add height to the cupcakes.  

And this is the cake.  I don't like to toot my own horn, but how adorable is this? It's freaking adorable that's what.  We baked a small chocolate double layer cake and took one chunk out of the side and flipped it over and put in on the other side of the cake.  Then we frosted the whole thing.  We crushed up some oreo's in the food processor and sprinkled a thick layer over the "digging" areas.

I used the truck graphics I bought to make the cupcake toppers personalized with Grant's age and name. 



I cut out circles in yellow and orange cardstock to mat the graphic toppers.

Lindsey ordered both chocolate and vanilla cupcakes from a local bakery.  We sprinkled oreo's on top of the chocolate to make it look like dirt and graham crackers over the vanilla to make it look like sand.

Needless to say Grant had a great time devouring his cake!