Homemade cars birthday party decorations

We had a Cars themed birthday party for my youngest son. I was unable to find all of the decorations we wanted so I made my own. It was pretty easy to do, and they turned out pretty well. (The pictures didn't turn out as well as I hoped, but you can get the gist from them I think!)

I wanted to have some race flags so I got 1 1/2 yards of black and white checked fabric from Wal-Mart. I cut the fabric into 16" squares, which I cut diagonally corner to corner to make triangles. I sewed hems on the two angled lines. Next I got 1/4" white rope that we had in the garage and sewed the last hem around the rope. I made a total of 16 flags.

Here are two views of the flags that I had hanging from the canopy. It was a bit breezy so I couldn't get a better shot... sorry!

I used my Cricut machine to cut out blue ribbons for everyone. I used them as the thank you notes that I put in the treat bags that all the kids took home. You could also use them as awards for any games that you play.

I cut the tops and bottoms off 2 boxes and then cut holes on 2 sides as handles.

I covered the "cars" with aluminum foil and taped around the edges to make sure that it would stay put.

I cut out 2 different sizes of circles using my Cricut machine to make headlights.

These are the headlights on the box cars.

Here are the numbers on the side of the box cars.

For the activity you have the kids step into the center of the "car" and hold it up by the handles on either side. Then they do a relay race going around a "race track." For our race track my husband used blue painters' tape and made 2 lanes so both teams would have their own lanes. It was inexpensive, quick and easy to set up and clean up, and effective.

I used the lids from the box cars to make license plates that all the kids got to decorate. Here's a picture of the birthday boy with his license plate. (He was in a funny mood and all of his pictures are cheesy smiles with his eyes closed. Silly boy!) I let them all decorate their plates with foamie stickers that had pictures and letters. Then I wrote their names on the side because most of them wanted to cover as much as they could before I could write their names in the center. One idea is when they get thank you cards you can edit these photos to make them look like driver's licenses.