Elmo themed 2nd birthday celebrations

On Thursday I shared a quick post on our 2nd birthday celebrations but today it’s all about the Elmo party we had with our family and friends. Trying our best to observe nap times we hosted an Elmoterific afternoon bash from noon to three at my parent’s place in the hopes of using their backyard. Weather has been crappy lately so we ended up in the basement which worked just as well for us. Given than we have version 2.0 arriving this week we wanted to keep things simple and definitely not an extravagant affair like we did last year with the Bollywood Bash. One word of advice, before agreeing on a theme check out your local dollar store to see what characters are in season. The Little Monkey was constantly shifting through Hello Kitty, Minnie Mouse and Elmo and I chose Elmo. Guess what… hunting down Elmo stuff was mission impossible. Hello Kitty and Minnie were everywhere!! Oh and let’s not forget to mention that the Little Monkey woke up on the day of her party and wanted NOTHING to do with Elmo. She refused to wear the outfit I got her but luckily that soon turned around when I offered her a cookie in exchange for wearing the outfit! PHEW!  ( I know bribing is bad. BUT. Desperate times call for desperate measures).

Decor 

I found high quality images of Elmo and the Sesame Street sign ( I edited to include the no. 2 and Akira’s name) which I printed and got the hubs to cut ( I can’t cut anything for the life of me!). Included some streamers and balloons along with all the Elmo toys we had. easy, cheerful and totally on the cheap! As soon as guests pulled up to the driveway they saw balloons and some Elmo feet directing them to the side entrance. The feet were hand drawn and then coloured by the Little Monkey and I, unfortunately no one took pictures of the outside!

Food and Drink

Ofcourse we had goldfish and there was talk of pizza too (Elmo loves his pizza!) but we didn’t get to ordering any pizza. The fruit and veggie platters were a hit and the dips for the eyes was a good call! I enjoyed the challenge of making a pull apart Elmo cupcake cake and I’ve included photos to illustrate how we lined the cupcakes up before icing. It was a struggle with the many gaps between the cupcakes so I highly advice you to either place fondant or a layer of icing before starting to decorate. We didn’t do either and it took a bit longer trying to fill the gaps with the muffin tops we had sliced off. Ofcourse no brown party would be complete without some shorteats so we had cutlets, Sri Lankan Chinese rolls and some buns to provide some real sustenance. Jello cups were also another popular one..mainly because they were cute to look at. Bought plastic shot cups and attached eyes  ( should have bought large eyes), a fluffy nose and markered in the mouth. I got these done and ensured the glue was dry before pouring the jello in and placing them in the fridge to set. Popcorn is another favourite snack in our household so I had some Kernels popcorn on offer for guests to nosh on. I loved the Jalapeno Cheddar one! Beer, wine, juice and water were the liquids of the day and I’d like to think that everyone was happy about the features there.

Entertainment

The main attraction was Elmo… despite having spent over five hours trying to find a costume I had no luck. Seriously, if you live in Toronto and you see one.. BUY it and rent it out. There’s money to be made there! I lucked out by finding someone to rent from (check out her Etsy store for some cute Tutus!)  and a friend helped pick and drop it off for me since he was neighbours with Elmo’s owner. The costume was quite tall and luckily we had a friend who was just perfect for the outfit and was thrilled to wear the costume and get the kids moving. Boy did he do a fab job! He doesn’t even have any kids! Some kids were a bit apprehensive of Elmo but the rest were all into it. The Little Monkey was very sad when Elmo left, that was foshure! She was thrilled to have him around!   We also had some play mats out for the crawling babies and toys for the toddlers. Since we had a couple 4 year olds in attendance I also placed some colouring pages around for them to have a go at. The challenge really is having a wide range of activities so that everyone is entertained. If weather cooperated I would have ideally liked them to be in the backyard with some bubbles and maybe even a bouncy castle! Alas… given that both kids are October babies I guess a garden affair is probably never in our future.

Giveaway

Little treats of goldfish, some fruit candies and the  best Elmo cookies ever from Dec-o-Cake were handed out to the guests as they departed! Seriously the cookies were gorgeous and the kids loved the surprise at the end, infact quite a few moms wanted cookies for themselves! If you’re ever looking for some fun cookies, give Dec-o-Cake a try!

There you go, a simple Elmo party to celebrate a 2nd birthday! Best of all clean up was super easy since decor was kept to a minimum but it still had a big impact! What will year 3 bring? We’ll find out I’m sure!