Sesame Street 1st Birthday Party

My son turned one over a month ago but we waited to have the party when both sets of grandparents could be in Colorado for a visit. A couple weekends ago we had the party and it was wonderful. When I started planning, I had no idea what theme I wanted, so naturally, I browsed pinterest. I just couldn't come up with anything on my own for this one...so I had to use some great inspiration. As you will notice in the pictures below, I pretty much followed the ideas at annies-eats.com...I mean when someone has done such a nice job, might as well follow their ideas rather than recreate the wheel. And that is exactly what I did...Please enjoy the pictures but head over to other blogs mentioned throughout this post for the original ideas and tutorials- they deserve the credit!

Invitations modeled from this idea: Invites  I liked the simplicity of the faces of the characters and had the materials and scalloped punch on hand. I decided to do just Oscar because I liked him the best :) Here is how I made my invites.

1. Took a sheet of 8.5 by 11 black card stock and folded it twice towards the center to create a sheet with three parts. In the center I placed my printed invitation (on yellow card stock) and trimmed down the black card stock to leave a small border around the yellow invite on the top and bottom.
2. I created the Oscars by using a 2.25inch circle scallop punch and cutting out green circles for his head.  I then loaded vinyl on my cricut mat, played around on Sure Cuts a Lot until I had the circle sizes I wanted for the black and white eye sections, half circles for the mouth and smaller half circles for the tongue. I then played around to create the eye brow shape. I stuck everything on to the green circles and mounted the circles onto blue card stock squares. Finally, I folded the two sides together to overlap and wrapped twine around the card twice and topped it with the Oscar.

The decor was created using Annie's Eats as the model. Unfortunately I never got a picture of the whole eating area with the birthday banner and everything...so you will just have to use your imagination :) I purchased the little hanging honeycomb balls from Target and hung them in the entry way. I have to say, this may have been my favorite part. The half wall from our family room became the buffet area with a table in front. I used crepe paper to create a backdrop on the wall. I also created the party favor cookies using Annie's recipes for sugar cookies and royal icing and I would highly recommend them both- they were delicious and kept a long time! I also baked some eggless chocolate chip cookies for the party (my daughter has an egg allergy) and they were so good I think this will now be my go to recipe. They stayed soft and chewy for days and everyone loved them- here is a link to the recipe: Eggless Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

For the party I wanted to learn how to make a cake with fondant icing. My friend Ami helped me create this cake...well, she did most of the work, I just tried to assist where I could. It was modeled from this cake:  Sesame street cake I think it turned out well...it did start to fall the morning of the party so we had to make some repairs and it caused the fondant to crack...but it made it until the party. I am excited to try more cakes in the future.

In addition I made the same games as Annie and like her, my kids loved the bubbles the best- wish I had more pics! Here is my daughter enjoying the rubber ducky water and catching bubbles.

 And the guest of honor trying out a new toy...I think he had a good time!

Shannon