Dinner and a Movie: Creating a Cars Inspired Theme Night at Home

"I am Speed." Simple quote from the fantastic Disney-Pixar movie "Cars", and it was the theme of our second family movie night. My family's goal for this year is to make time for family fun; we wanted an inexpensive way that we could have a themed dinner, a few activities together, and then time to sit and watch a movie as a family. The first movie we chose was an Up themed night, and it was such a hit with the entire family, we got started the next day planning our next movie: "Cars".

The Dinner Menu: This was a fantastic menu- we were able to find some really creative ideas for themed foods to go with the movie "Cars". We served: Lightning McQueen Punch (aka red Hawaiian Punch), "I Am Speed" Subs, "Mack"-A-Roni and Cheese, Filmore's Traffic Lights (aka cracker sticks with chocolate frosting and a green, yellow and red M&M to make the traffic light), Mater's Veggie 'Dip Sticks', and Sallie's Cozy Cone Sundaes for dessert. To make the dessert, we took a small cup of ice cream, put a sugar cone upside down on top, and drizzled "oil" (aka hot fudge) on top of the cone. I can't say it was the most nutritious dinner I have ever served to my family, but the looks on the kids faces was absolutely worth it; they literally talked about this meal for weeks afterwards!

Decorations: The decorations were relatively easy for the "Cars" theme; we ate off of metal pie plates that I picked up at our local Dollar Store- except for our purposes, they were called hubcaps! We used an inexpensive black plastic tablecloth, although a black and white one would have been perfect to symbolize a checkered flag. I used my son's toy cars to decorate the centerpiece of Flo's Café that we had already owned. I also used a few small orange construction cones to sit on the table to make them look like Sally's Cozy Cones from the movie. We even "decorated" with our food for this theme- I made the "I Am Speed" Subs look like cars; just toast some submarine rolls in the oven for a few minutes, then add the fillings (we stuck with simple lunchmeat, lettuce and tomato)- then push four pretzel sticks into the sides of the roll, and put a round pickle slice on the pretzel to look like tires- super cute, and the kids appreciated the fun details. The best decoration of all was a re-creation of Luigi's Leaning Tower of Tires from the movie; we used chocolate covered doughnuts for the "tires", and stacked them onto a skewer. Since we had already made dessert for our meal, we put the donuts in a bag, and saved them for breakfast the next morning.

Activities: For activities, we printed out some coloring pages here for the kids to work on while my husband and I cleaned up after dinner. Then we had car races down the main hallway of our house- we made a checkered flag and all, and the winner of the races won the "Piston Cup"- which was actually a small Lightning McQueen thermos that I found at our local Walmart. The winner got to take the cup into the living room during the movie, which was a huge deal since the general household rule is no drinks in the living room!

Movie Time: Pretty self-explanatory for this part; we piled up blankets and pillows on the floor so we could all snuggle up to watch the movie together. I think my kids favorite part of this is that there are no "rules" here- we actually encourage talking and laughing during the movie because this is our time to reconnect with each other.

I would have to say that our second family movie night was another whopping success! We put the kids to bed that night, and were already taking requests for our next theme.

While the idea of these movie nights started out as just a budget-friendly way to spend some time together, I see that they are turning out to be a lot more- we are making memories to look back on for many years to come.