Rev it up for Colin's birthday

Colin decided a while back that he wanted a monster truck birthday party.  I'm always up for a challenge so I started planning (hiding my face) 6 months in advance.  I know this is so sad but I'm a planner, I need to research things, take time to try to recreate it myself or find a way to make things work.  The party was awesome, couldn't have asked for anything more.

Colin is that kid that likes icing, not cake.  It took me 3 years to figure this out so I thought I'd get smart and wanted to do a cookie cake.  Trouble is, I like to make things myself.  Either to save on cost or just to get my creative juices out where ever I can.  I googled several different recipes for a cookie cake.  I wanted it to taste just like the Great American Cookie co.  The first one I made was an instant fail, it was hard as a rock.  I ended up throwing it and the pan out, I wasn't about to waste my time jackhammering that sucker out of the pan.  Another weekend I decided to give it a try again.  I think my recipe was too much for the pan because it seeped over the sides and made a gigantic mess on the bottom of my oven.  I couldn't stand the burnt cookie smell any longer so I pulled the half baked cookie out of the oven and again, fail!  Second part of this story is that I decided it was time to try out the self cleaning feature on my oven.  Never using this feature, it was good I was home because a fire started in the oven!  I pulled out the fire extinguisher but guess what, it didn't work.  So I just turned the oven off and let it fizzle out.  Thank goodness because I was a mere second away from panic and dialing 911.

So, 2 failed attempts, I just bought a cookie cake from Sam's which was by far the best thing on earth.  If you haven't tried this, go get a membership just for the cake.  It's better than Great American Cookie co and so much cheaper.

Ok, enough with my chaos, on to the party.

 

Colin's invitation, this was a labor of love, I created this in publisher and of course changed it number of times before I thought it looked right.  I printed out the trucks and cut them all out and applied them with a foamy square to add some 3D effect. 

 This is on the back of the invitations.

 Photos of each of Colin's birthdays

 Table of goodies

 The infamous cookie cake.  It's a double layer cake with icing in between....YUM!

 Silverware wrapped with a napkin and personalized napkin rings.  I made these with 

labels and printed the design.

 Monster Truck balloons I bought online via ebay.  My friend Jessica located them for me, I was having the hardest time finding monster truck balloons.  I had 3 but Papa accidentally blew one up with the helium tank.

 Pin the license plate on the monster truck.  I think I saw something similar to this game online.  I printed out a monster truck clip art, blew it up and transferred it to my poster board.

 GODZILLA!  I found a guy close by that has this gigantic monster truck that he enters into shows and does parties.  I knew the kids would love it and boy did they!  I think I scored major brownie points for this one!

 Happy Birthday sweet boy!

A sweet new ride for his birthday!  Nana & Papa got his this cool truck.  It's a Ford but we won't hold that against it, it's pretty cool and he loves to drive it around.

We're already looking forward to next year's birthday party because you know I'm already starting to think about it.