Mater the Greater Stunt Party - 3rd Birthday

Curious George decided that he wanted a Mater the Greater birthday party this year. If you have no idea what Mater the Greater is take a look here. Mater plays the role of an Evil Knievel type stunt man in one of his Tall Tales. This was such a fun party to create because the theme lent itself to a bunch of fun, age appropriate games. It also gave me a very clear colour palette which always makes life easier. Of course Pinterest has also made finding birthday party idea much easier. I started collecting ideas straight away and here they are.

Lovely family shot with CG actually looking forward and not running away in usual CG fashion. Thanks Uncle Ben.

At the moment CG is very into jumping, running, riding his plastic motor bike and of course racing cars. He had also been asking to have a jumping castle at his party since our 30th birthday party (which you can see here). So I decided to go with a whole lot of stunt type games, all age appropriate of course.

The Stunt Race Track:

We marked out a race track on the ground with chevron tape and then placed some obstacles along the track; a mini trampoline, a board with bumps on it, a fabric tunnel and our home made 'fire' hoops. I also made some 'steering wheels' out of plastic plates which I cut to look like steering wheels and decorated with insulation tape and stickers.

Super dad setting out the race track at 7:00am.

Our 'fire' hoops. I used hula hoops and stands and made flames out of cardboard.

 

The High Dive:

We set up our garden table and placed beanbags and mattresses around it. The children has a great time jumping from the table and crashing into the beanbags.

Death defying downhill race:

Each child got a little car from the Cars movie in their party pack. We created these 'downhill race tracks' out of big poster rolls I found on the side of the road. The kids had a ball sending their little cars racing down the tubes.

Jump Practice:

And of course the infamous jumping castle. This stole the show, the kids loved it and Curious George had a blast.

I had his shirt printed from the image we used on the invitation.

The Kiddies Table:

I recreated Mater's 'death defying' car jump stunt on the kids eats table. CG has a soft toy Mater which I transformed into Mater the Greater. I used felt pieces which I painted and pinned to him and I created a helmet for him out of iClay. The I created some cars in photoshop, printed them,cut them out and stuck them along the edge of the table. Lastly I placed Mater on our slide, creating a ramp so he was ready for action.

The Cake:

For the cake I decided to recreate Mater's High Dive from the animation. I made a simple round cake with butter cream icing, blue piping gel for the water and finger biscuits for the barrel. For the ladder I used the ladder from CG's toy fire engine which we stuck to the base with play dough. As we can not get Mater the Greater toys in SA I bought a regular Mater car from Toys R Us and painted him to look like Mater the Greater adding the snorkel and mask with iClay. CG was very please with his cake and after we blew the candles out he asked me to make Mater dive into the cake, which I did of course and this thrilled the kiddies.

Of course we had the obligatory toddler blow-spit the candles out.

CG decided the best part of the cake were the finger biscuits and the fondant stars.

Love his reaction to the cake when it arrived.

All the parents taking pictures of the kids enjoying the cake.

 

One of my favourite parts of the party was CG reacting to us all singing happy birthday to him. He just lapped up the attention and laughed and laughed. He taught me something about living in the moment that day.

Everyone had a wonderful time and I was thrilled that CG enjoyed himself so much that he didn't even get a chance to eat any sweeties from the kids table (a point be bemoaned later). After everyone had gone home we used the giant photo 3, we had made out of photos from his third year, as a part of the thank you card for all the wonderful gifts he got from our very generous friends and family.

Just had to add this photo of him opening his adventure backpack from my cousins and aunt and uncle.

Thanks everyone for making his day fabulous.