Cars themed Cookie Pop Favors

My final Cars Pinspiration I am going to share are the favors. I wanted something not too expensive or too difficult to make, since there was going to be a large number of people.

I was Pinterest inspired by this Pinterest Pin. It was super easy and pretty cute, until I found it impossible to find large lollipops at a reasonable price.

So I decided to try my hand at cookie Pops. I found a circle cookie pan at Michael's for $5.00 (with my 50% off coupon). And found a Pinterest Recipe for Sugar Cookies. Here.

Cookie Pop recipe:

Ingredients - 

1/2 cup of butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup powdered sugar

2 large eggs

3/4 cup of vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon cream of tarter

4" - 6" craft sticks (I used 6")

Beat butter and shortening together with an electric mixer until it is fluffy, then add sugars. Once well beat; add eggs, oil, vanilla and blend well. 

Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cream of tarter to the above mixture. Cover and chill for at least to hours (I left it overnight). 

Once dough is ready, fill greased cookie pan with the dough, put the stick in the pan (make sure the stick is well covered with dough), bake at 350 degrees for 13 - 16 minutes. 

Let the cookies cool, then put them on a cooling rack. If the cookies are sticking to the pan, you are not greasing them enough. 

I actually made 4 batches of this recipe and it yielded a little more than 5 dozen large cookie pops. 

The cookie pops had a cake like taste, they weren't very sugar cookie tasting, more like shortbread. They were not the best sugar cookies, but I did get a lot of complements. I also really like my sweets sweet. So I'm not the best judge.

I did add cookie icing to the cookies and made a lightning bolt, for Lightning McQueen of course. This recipe was from a cook book, not from Pinterest. Sorry. It is a really easy recipe.

Cookie Icing Recipe:

Ingredients - 

1 cup of sifted powdered sugar (I am a rebel and did not sift)

1/4 teaspoon of vanilla

1 tablespoon of milk or orange juice (I used a little milk and water)

Combine all the ingredients and add food coloring of your choice. I like to use wilton gel coloring because it's what I use to color all of my other icing. 

Here is the lightning bolt view of the Car themed cookie pop favors. 

The favors came out great, and I guess tasted Ok too. So it's another Pinterest Success. 

Cars themed Decorations

Our Cars themed birthday bash was a huge success. But it wouldn't have been very festive with out all the decorations. Pinterest was a huge inspirations for a lot of the birthday decorations.

The main Pinspiration for my food table came from this amazing pin: See more here

I made a table runner similar to the one in the Pin, I also put a tire on the table (instead of hubcaps). And I used the pendant idea, but I put Xander's Pit Stop in the pendants. But overall a huge inspiration to my food table.

The balloons on the wall are not filled with helium, they are instead taped to the wall. I saw this idea on Pinterest, but I never pinned it. And once you lose a pin on Pinterest, it is most likely gone forever. 

Another cute idea on Pinterest that I recreated was this Pin:

Only we use our garage too frequently, so I opted for a safer place to put a giant two. I put it as a backdrop to our dessert table. 

One other Pinspiration that we used in creating the decorations, was to thread blown up balloons and hang them. I love any decoration idea with balloons because they are so inexpensive. 

Here is our version, with some streamers on the sides of the entertainment center bookshelves.

While these Pinterest Successes were a great addition to the party decorations, I did come up with a couple ideas myself. For the front door I had a sign that said "Racer's Welcome" and added the left over safety cones. I also put up pendents on all the big windows in the house, and filled a few balloons with helium. For the gift table I had a banner that said "Happy Birthday Xander", and some balloons.

One last decoration, that was absolutely one of my favorite decorations, was the tire painted to say "Xander's 2nd Birthday". This is was the first decoration saw by the guess, and let them know they were at the right place. Thanks to my friends at Ranger Tire Paint, this decoration came out amazing!

 The Cars party was such a huge success and the decorations came out magnificent, thanks to Pinterest!

Cars themed Cake

Some people are aware I have a "hidden talent". My talent is decorating mediocre looking cakes. I'm no cake boss, but I am talented enough that people comment on my cakes. Some tell me they look great, some even say they taste great. I am very critical of my work, so I think they look OK. And the cake is from a box, so thank you Betty Crocker.

Cakes are very expensive to buy, so for dollars I can make and decorate a cake that is worth a small fortune in the cake business. I wanted to decorate the cake to fit the Cars theme, but also match the colors of the party. The colors being red, black, and white.

I took a little from a few Pinterest Pins, and created a pretty cute looking cake. Here are the Pins that gave me my inspiration:

I really liked this first one, and my cake was largely inspired by this cake, but it did need a little more pizzaz.

This next one was my favorite but I really wanted to stick to the colors and it was a little too colorful, so I settled on using the Cars logo sign (with Xander's name on it). 

This one was too red, but I liked that it really went with the color scheme, and I liked the checkered flags (not so many though). 

Lastly, I really liked the tires and the cones in this cake, but again I wanted to stick with the color scheme, so I opted for just making the tires.

Here is my version of a Cars themed Birthday Cake.... (Drum Roll please)

Obviously the cake doesn't look like one Pinterest Pin, but a compilation of Pinspirations. So since it was a big hit at the party, it's a Pinterest Success in my book. 

Cars themed Birthday Food

For our Cars themed birthday food, most of the food and drinks that we provided were toddler/kid friendly. So basically we had macaroni and cheese and hotdogs. We did add a little fun to the presentation of our Cars food. 

Inspired by this Pinterest Pin. We borrowed a couple of the table tent names, but we came up with a few gems of our own.

Here is the food and fun from our big Cars birthday bash...

Mack's Cheese

Dinoco Dogs

Mater's Taters

Chick's Mix

Sarge's Sandwiches

Doc's Fruit

The little cars in Doc's Fruit was inspired from this pinterest Pin. We just used an apple slicer and sliced grapes in half, then used a toothpick to adhere the grapes to the apple.

Our beverage center had a little inspiration from the first pin's blog. But there was some non-Pinterest inspiration too. 

Flo's V8 Cafe

Motor Oil

Antifreeze

Stock Room at Flo's

Printed Water Bottle Labels

Lastly we have the desserts. I am going to save revealing the cake until my next post, but we did have a few other tasty treats that were inspired from the first Pinterest pin. 

Luigi's Casa Della Tires

Sheriff's Stop Lights

Pinterest gave me some great ideas for an epic Cars birthday bash, without it being too generic. So we have yet another Pinterest Success.

Week 9 Theme...

This past weekend we held a raging toddler Cars themed party. Now that all the pre-party planning and execution is over, I have lots of Pinspirations to share. For the party, a lot of the food and decorations were influenced by Pinterest Pins.

I will be sharing lots of pictures from this past weekend birthday bash, including the front door entrance decorations, the main food table, inexpensive decorations, THE CAKE, and the favors.

We had such a wonderful time celebrating our son Xander's second birthday with 31 of his little friends. Sounds like a big and scary number, but we kept the kids pretty entertained and they were all in good spirits and had such good behavior. I would do it all over in a heartbeat.

This will be an easy Pinterest Challenge week, but I could use a little break after all the partying. Can't wait to share all the fun!