My son Jayden turned 1 on August 5, 2012. I knew I wanted to go along with the Sesame Street theme. After watching Jayden play with several Sesame Street characters. It was not long before I realized that he adored the one and only Elmo!! So I had to think of how I was going to plan a big birthday on a budget considering we had to drive back to our home state of Ga. First thing I wanted to organize was the cake. Its always the easiest.
I ordered this cake from Publix Bakery. I love their cakes!!!! Not too sweet, just right. I believe this was butter creme frosting. This cake was like $25 bucks. Plus you get a FREE smash cake! Next thing was of course pictures! Every birthday child needs to have birthday pictures. I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on pictures. Sears always has great deals with free sessions and free photos. I snatched a coupon and made an appointment for Jayden. You can find the fliers at the register counter. (I have pictures at the bottom)
Now it was time to think about decorations. I thought about the main colors for Sesame Street (red, yellow, blue, and green). I wanted to have a area to display Jayden's photos and favorite things. I made the poster board below for under $4!
I bought a foam poster board and foam sheets as well for the letters from The Dollar Tree. The words were just hand written using Crayola Poster markers (I already had these on hand). Cookie Monster and Big Bird were colored and cut out of a Sesame Street coloring book($1 at Dollar Tree). You can get fancy and use the Circut to do this but it was a lot cheaper for me to do it this way. I wanted to recreate the street post. After looking online at many sites... I decided to put my own twist on it.
The street sign is made out of a wooden dowel, styrofoam ball, cardstock, wooden slab, hot glue, and green paint. The blank sign template was found on Google images and the words were created on my laptop just using paint and MS Word. I created several stands titled Jayden's Favorite Things, Coloring Station, Dorothy's Goldfish Friends, Slimey's Gummy Worm Friends, etc.
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| I printed that Slimey from Google images. I hand drew Dorothy but I cannot find a good picture of it for the life of me!! |
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| This was the coloring station that turned into the eating station! LOL. Kids will be kids. They wanted to eat and color at the same time :D |
For music I went to party city and bought the Personalized Just Me Music Elmo CD. It was like $5. All you do is go to the website and download the link to download your childs name to the cd. It was really simple. Jayden enjoyed hearing Elmo say, "Jayden...sing with Elmo!" It was adorable. All the children thought it was cool that Elmo knew his name.
For food we had Zaxby's Chicken Strips, Fruit & Veggie Platters, Goldfish, Gummy Worms, Soda and Juice.
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| Cookie Monster- blueberries, blackberries, yogurt and blueberry eyes. Elmo- grape tomatoes, whole black olives, baby carrots, ranch and black olive eyes. Oscar- broccoli crowns, baby carrots, grape tomatoes, whole black olives, ranch and olive eyes. Big Bird- Pineapple chunks, yogurt and blueberry eyes, Twizzlers bits. |
I had a photo backdrop banner of the Sesame Street Characters that I bought from Party City. I think it was around $5.
Of course there were balloons in the Sesame Street colors that I mentioned earlier. I also had Elmo face balloons that I got from the Dollar Tree!
Now when it comes to the highlight of a first birthday, '"The Cake Smash," I didn't want to go all out and buy a highchair decor kit. Party City had them for like $12 or $13. That's too much for a one time event. We drove from Omaha back to GA in our Durango. There was no way we would have had room for a high chair and there was no need to buy one. Being that I use to teach, I wanted something that I could use in the future with my child care center. I went thrifting and found this smile face cut out. Im not sure what this originally was, but it worked.
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| It was made out of plastic but VERY heavy duty. Washable surface for easy clean up. |
Here are a few more snap shots from the party! Enjoy!
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| On the left corner of the table was a cookie jar filled with cookies. I had a miniture cardboard figure of The Count with a note card that read "Count with The Count....Guess how many cookies are in the jar." The winner got the jar of cookies. |
I found a really nice robe at a thrift store for $3! I couldn't find something like a scythe so I went with an old clock. I also got that from the thrift store it was $4. It still works! Now the hard part was finding a wig and beard. After searching online, I finally decided to give Party City a try. They can get a little expensive. I was happy that I found that beard for $4.99. Not to bad. It was a plush beard with moustache and I found it with the Christmas costumes. Although this beard was nice and soft, it shed!!! But i found a purpose for the shedded hair. I used it for the eyebrows. His hair is just an old pair of white stockings from my 4 year old.
The necklaces and tinsel kept him occupied long enough to get through the shoot. It was about 40 mins total.
