Sesame Street First Birthday

My youngest turned one back in September. I really love throwing kids parties! I try and use my creativity to do the most I can on the budget I set for the party. So I made plenty of trips to the Dollar Tree, of course. Got out all of my crafting supplies and started about a month ahead putting things together. At first I had thought I'd break and buy the licensed party supplies, but I like the look of DIY much better. So I started with making shirts.....

I found these organic long sleeve onsies for $1.50 each at Walmart. I bought about a half of a yard of some flannel Sesame Street fabric,a pack of  felt rectangles, and iron-on, no sew adhesive to adhere to the back. I drew a number one on some card stock, free hand. Then cut it out and used it to cut the number one's from the Sesame Street Flannel. I then placed each number one on a coordinating felt rectangle and cut around until it had enough border to make it pop! I bought matching bows for the girls at Walmart for $1.00 each.

Moving on.....I wanted to make a bunch of different character bags for favors. I realized it could take forever to cut and paste ( I don't have a Cricut machine). I narrowed my choice down to Elmo and Big Bird. I found red and yellow plain party bags at the dollar store in packs of ten. I used cookie cutter circles to trace eyes, and Elmo's mouth (cut bigger circles in half) on construction paper and hot glue to stick them on the bags. I then free hand traced a nose for Elmo onto card stock, and when I made one that looked good enough I used that as my guide to trace onto orange construction. I traced a rounded triangle for Big Birds beak and then folded the construction paper and traced it so the folded line was the back of the beak. That way I had a top and bottom to the beak without having to glue. I traced the inner parts of Big Birds mouth and hot glue those to the beaks. I then cut the pink and blue eyelids, then glued them onto the bags. When it came time to glue on Big Birds beak I decided to glue down the entire bottom portion of the beak ( I originally wanted to glue the crease so the whole beak popped off of the bag). The last thing I did was take a black sharpie and make pupils. They weren't all exactly uniform, but thats what I love about DIY! Inside were Sesame Street themed board books, stickers, and baby flash cards ( all from Dollar Tree)!

I normally make my own cakes, but due to the fact that I was already investing my time in various crafts for the party I decided to give myself a break and ask Walmart to do the cake. I saw a Dora and Diego themed specialty cake in their book and asked if they could use the same format to do a Sesame Street cake, this is how it turned out!

The guest tables were a combination of Dollar Tree Elmo balloons, string, and party wieghts, and Party City summer clearance confetti ( 50 cents a pack, one pack per table)! I also took all plates, cups, napkins, and cutlery and staggered the primary colors for visual effect ( all Dollar Tree)!

At the last minute (12-4am the night before) I realized I wanted to make a homemade banner and that I'd regret if I didn't. So I kept it primary colors, simple rectangles, and traced stencil letters in white paint. I also made labels for the snacks on the table(see picture at top of page) with crayons to look like Elmo's world. We had Elmo's goldfish, Abby's magical marshmallows, Number of the day cookie ( a back to school special at walmart, number cookies in primary colors), and the letter of the day was M for M&M's!I got Sesame Street juice boxes by Apple and Eve in 8 packs at Walmart ( fruit punch has Elmo on it and Apple juice has Big Bird). I wrapped an empty Huggies jumbo pack box with Sesame Street wrapping paper (Dollar Tree) to elevate the cake on.

I also used a party hat I had leftover from another party and felt and fabric leftover from the T-shirts to hot glue and make a party hat for the birthday boy!

The kids area I set up had an empty swimming pool filled with ball pit balls ( Rubber Ducky's pond), a bubble machine ( $6.00 at Walmart, $1.00 for the mega bubbles), various Sesame Street interactive toys from our home collection ( Elmo Live, Cookie counting Cookie Monster, Musical Ernie), and giant inflatable Happy Birthday Elmo (eBay, oh yeah). The little ones had a blast in their safe play zone and the mamas got to enjoy the party too! All in all it was a great time! Hope some of these Ideas help for those of you throwing a Sesame Street party!