Birthday Invitations

My little guy is about to turn 4 and is SO excited about having a birthday party.  He's one of the younger ones amongst his friends so he understands this whole birthday-party-thing and is ready for his turn.  He and I have been discussing the details for awhile, since I've been trying to figure out what to do.  We don't have a lot of room so the thought of a dozen little bodies (and potentially a few parents) running around our tiny place did not sound remotely fun to me.  I decided we'd have it at a local park where a brand new playground should be finished just in time for the party.  We've gone through a few different iterations of "theme" - I really don't care that much since this is a very low maintenance party.  He seems to have landed on a Cars 2 theme.  This works for me.  Racecar cupcakes should be doable.  Racecar party favors should be pretty easy too.
Awhile ago, I saw these amazing movie posters on a blog and fell in love.  There is one for Tokyo, Paris, London and Porto Corsa.  They are all completely awesome and I love them enough to hang them in my living room, I tell you, and I am usually not into licensed kid-character-stuff.  I am still trying to figure out where to buy them - they don't appear to be for sale - but for now I decided to capitalize on the awesome design and use them for our party invitations.  Here's the original image:

...And indulge me, here are the other posters (cool, huh?):

And here is the invitation with the location/details obscured (hopefully I didn't break a bunch of copyright laws, but I figure I'm okay here since this is definitely a not-for-profit venture).  I love photoshop when it gives me what I want!  I love these!  Granted, they cost about twice as much as generic store-bought invitations, but sometimes it's worth the fun of creating something unique.  I have to put my skills to work doing something productive, after all.

I had it printed on 5x7 postcards with more party information on the back.  I'm pretty excited to see the final product when it arrives in a few days and even more excited to send them out in a couple of weeks!

This brings me to the rookie-mom anecdote.  It seems that around 4 is when kids develop preferences for some kids and decide that some kids, well, aren't their style.  I'm trying to figure out how to handle this.  We're still at that age of complete and total honesty where kids say stuff like, "why is he/she here?  I don't want them at my party!"  Hopefully we can find a way to make most people happy with this one, but the most important thing to me is that my son gets a party with friends and cupcakes and he has an amazing day where he feels special.
We are gearing up to take the boys to their first movie in the theater on Saturday: Cars 2 of course.  These are the sorts of funny things I've been discovering around my house for the last few days.  Meet Finn McMissile.  He's quite the British Spy.  He even rides a skateboard apparently.