I wanted to make everything colorful and fun for his big day, from rainbow cupcakes, streamers, balloons, giant crayons and more!
Get Organized
If you are planning a big party, make sure to make lists. First, I start with planning my guest list to know how many adults and kids to invite. This is important to know before you start buying party favors and other party supplies. Next, I start making a party-planning to-do list. This helps be organized, where I jot down my ideas, and list items I need for the party.
Pinterest has helped me become a better party planner with so many awesome ideas to use and to be inspired by! One of the many cute Elmo party ideas I found while pinning, I saw several fruit and veggie trays made of Sesame Street characters. I knew for sure that I wanted to make an Elmo fruit tray.
Elmo Fruit Tray
On an oval platter, I used strawberries for Elmo's face, blueberries and blackberries for the mouth, and mandarin oranges for his nose. For the eyes, I found in the refrigerated section at the grocery store, individual cream cheese fruit dip. The fruit dip cups were already the right size for his eyes, and just needed to add two blackberries to finish it off.
Elmo Pom-Pom
The pom-pom decorations were also inspired by an idea I found on Pinterest. I used my Cricut machine with the Elmo's Party cartridge to cut the eyes and nose for the Elmo pom-pom. I free handed the mouth on black card stock paper and cut it out, and glued the face to the red pom-pom.
Party Decorations
The banners, high chair decorations, party favor bags, table cloth, silly straws, plates and napkins were all found at Party City and they were on sale! Woohoo!!
Party Favors
The party favors were inspired by Elmo's love of crayons, Cookie Monster, and Dorothy (Elmo's goldfish). I thought about how I could use crayons for the favors, such as coloring books with crayons, Sesame Street character shaped crayons, but I came across a party website that carried plastic crayon piggy banks. This was a great find because these were unique, cute and even functional for kids of all ages. My daughter helped me fill each coin bank with candy. We also gave Snack-size Chips Ahoy, Goldfish snack packs, Sesame Street silly straws and stickers for the favors. To display some the favors, I wrapped a box with Sesame Street wrapping paper.
Party Favor/Thank you Sign
I love making a cute favor sign to match any party theme. I try to come up with a catchy phrase or rhyme when I make favor signs and here's what it said:
"Elmo loves to party & hope you had fun...Thanks for coming to celebrate...Carter turning 1!"
Photo Collage-Baby's First Year
I'm guilty of constant baby photo posting on Instagram throughout Carter's 1st year. To all my friends and family...I'm sorry for the non-stop photos in your news feeds but then again, I'm not sorry. I captured so many memories each time I posted and when I look back at these photos, it reminds me how fast time flies and how much babies change in their first year. I wanted to display these photos somehow at the party. So I ordered prints from Prinstagram for the first time and they turned out so perfect! I arranged the photos to make a #1 photo collage and even placed them in chronological order to show how he had grown throughout his first year. I didn't want to ruin the pictures with tape or staples, so I used sticky tack to adhere them to the wall.
CAKE-CAKE-CAKE
I made these Elmo and Sesame Street-inspired #1 cupcake toppers with my Cricut machine. Since the party color palette was so colorful, I wanted to make rainbow-colored cupcakes and smash cake. I also made homemade vanilla almond buttercream frosting, and it was divine!
I've never taken a cake decorating class in my life, but I think the smash cake and cupcakes turned out pretty cute!! I wrapped the cardboard cake rounds with chevron scrapbook paper to make them more interesting. That was a last minute decision to wrap the cake rounds, but I'm really glad that I did that because the plain white cardboard was really ugly.
I prefer the taste of homemade cake/cupcakes for parties and it's also cost effective. Carter loved his smash cake as you can see...and he was not a happy boy when we took him away from the cake either! The guests also enjoyed the cupcakes too.
Giant crayons
I found these giant inflatable crayons on the same website I ordered the crayon coin banks. The giant crayons were great to use as party decor and also helped tie in the crayon theme. I had imagined using them as fun photo props with the kids but didn't get around to taking as many photos as I had wanted to that day. Carter didn't nap very long on the day of his party, so all he wanted me to do most of the time was hold him.
Goldfish Jello Bowl and Sesame Street Card
My sweet cousin Dorothy made this Goldfish Jello bowl and the cutest handmade birthday card with Sesame Street characters. I loved the card so much that I wanted to display it at the party! It looked great next to the cookie tray with all its fun colors!
Special thanks to my sister Laura and my cousin Dorothy Anne and her family, who came early to help set up for the party! Also thanks to all our guests that came to celebrate Carter's 1st Birthday!
This party was brought to you by the letter C and the number 1! :)
